inishie no kamiyo no kage zo nokorikeru ama no iwato no akegata no tsuki
The bygone Age of Gods’ light Lingers in The Heavens’ stone door Opening, for the moon at dawn.[i]
618
[i] See: On the conception of the moon at dawn, for the Kasuga Poetry Match. 天の戸をおしあけがたの雲間より神よの月の影ぞ残れる ama no to o / oshi akegata no / kumoma yori / kamiyo no tsuki no / kage zo nokoreru ‘Upon the gates of Heaven / Pushing brightening / Through the cloud-gaps / From the Age of Gods, the moon’s / Light lingers.’ The Regent and Chancellor (Shinkokinshū XVI: 1547)
kimi ga yo wa ama no iwato o izuru hi no iku meguri chō kazu mo shirarezu
My Lord’s reign: Since from the stone door in the heavens Emerged the sun, ‘How many circuits has she made?’, they ask— A number quite unknown.
Lord Saburō 59
Right
みかさやまふもとのさとはあめのしたふるにおもひもあらじとぞ思ふ
mikasayama fumoto no sato wa ame no shita furu ni omoi mo araji to zo omou
At Mikasa Moutain’s Foot, in a hamlet ‘neath the heavens Passing time—painful thoughts There I’d have not a one, I feel!
Ushigimi 60
The Left’s poem goes beyond the general flow of diction, containing mystery and depth. I have to say it is truly superior. While the Right’s poem has no faults to mention, it has yet to emerge from prosaic expression. Thus, the Left wins.
The ‘stone door in the heavens’ is that which the supreme sun-deity Amaterasu stood before and then entered. But when we’re talking about dawn breaking at the end of night, we say ‘gates of heaven’. Which of these two was did the poet have in mind, I wonder? If he was thinking of dawn breaking, then the usage is erroneous, but even if he did mean ‘stone door of the heavens’, then do we use this about the circuits of the sun? This is vague. In addition, the final ‘they ask’ is difficult to pronounce. As for the Right’s poem, ‘‘neath the heavens’ lacks emotion. The dual use of ‘thoughts’ and ‘feels’, as I have already remarked, is not an error, but does grate on the ears a bit.
