Round Four

Left

水のおももみなふるゆきにうづもれてたちゐやなげくいけのにほどり

mizu no omo mo mina furu yuki ni uzumorete tachi’i ya nageku ike no niodori

The surface of the water Entirely by the falling snow Is buried— Do they sorrow for their diving, The grebes around the pond?

Cell of the Fragrant Elephant
49

Right (Win)

みよしのに雪ふりぬれば我がやどのならのかれ葉はいとどさびしも

miyoshino ni yuki furinureba wa ga yado no nara no kareba wa itodo sabishi mo

In fair Yoshino Snow has fallen, so At my house The withered oak leaves are All the more alone…

Cell of the Everlasting Truth
50

The poem of the Left’s ‘surface of the water entirely buried by snow’ is something that I have never heard before. ‘Grieving grebes’, too, are something I have yet to encounter. Really, what sort of poem is this? As for the poem of the Right, while ‘all the more alone’ and what precedes it fails to sound elegant, at the current time I feel it’s a little bit superior.

It’s extremely difficult to conceive of the surface of a body of what which hasn’t yet frozen being buried in snow. If snow fell extremely heavily, then, surely, the water would overflow, then freeze, and then get buried, wouldn’t it? I might be going a little too far here, though. As for the Right’s poem, is ‘my house’ in Yoshino? Or is it on an estate elsewhere? If it’s on an estate, is the poet looking at the falling snow and imagining Yoshino? It’s vague. Then again, as the poem doesn’t say explicitly that the oaks are buried by the snow, is it only imagining this? How might something be which has not been seen for sure? The oaks here, too, would be like that, as snow is something which doesn’t distinguish where it falls…