Round Seven

Left (Win)

しらゆきのふりしきぬればかづらきやくめのいはばしそことしられず

shirayuki no furishikinureba kazuraki ya kume no iwabashi soko to shirarezu

Snow, so white Has fallen, scattering Upon Kazuraki, that The broken stone bridge of Kume Is there no one knows at all.

Lady Kazusa
55

Right

まきもくのあなしひばらもうづもれてかかるみゆきもふればふりけり

makimoku no anashi hibara no uzumorete kakaru miyuki mo fureba furikeri

In Makimoku Anashi’s cypress groves Are buried, Such a fair fall of snow Has there been.

Lady Shikibu
56

The Left has neither positives nor negatives. Up to ‘the broken stone bridge of Kume’ shows some imagination. It feels overly remote. The Right’s ‘Anshi’s cypress groves’ is something I’ve not encountered in a poem before. The standard usage is ‘cypress groves of Anashi’. Compared to this, I feel the expression is more unsatisfactory. ‘Such a fair fall of snow / Has there been’ is surprising, too, and not something I’m accustomed to seeing, so the Left seems a bit better at present.

The Left does not appear to have any significant faults. ‘That’ in ‘upon Kazuraki, that’ sounds a bit distant. If you’re talking about a bridge, you should say that you can see across it, shouldn’t you. It is a bridge which it’s impossible to cross, so that’s difficult to say. The Right’s expression ‘Anashi’s cypress groves’ is pedestrian so I would have preferred it omitted. In addition, the final ‘has there been’ feels commonplace. A win for the Left, perhaps.