Composed on the conception of love as a year passes when people were at the residence of the Regent and former Minister of the Left.
われがみはとがへるたかとなりにけりとしはふれどもこゐはわすれず
| ware ga mi Fa togaFeru taka to narinikeri tosi Fa Furedomo kowi Fa wasurezu | My flesh as A hawk returning to its mews Has become; A year has passed, yet This love I will not forget. |
The Minister of the Left [Minamoto no Toshifusa]
Left.
大原や野邊の御幸に所得て空取る今日の眞白斑の鷹
| ōhara ya nobe no miyuki ni tokoro ete soratoru kyō no mashirō no taka |
Ōhara Plain for an Imperial Progress is Most apt; Catching prey a’wing this day Is a white banded hawk! |
529
Right (Win).
嵯峨の原走る雉子の形跡は今日の御幸に隱れなき哉
| saga no hara hashiru kigisu no kata ato wa kyō no miyuki ni kakurenaki kana |
On the field of Saga Racing, the pheasants’ Tracks Today’s Imperial Progress Will not come at all… |
530
The Right state that ‘most apt’ (tokoro ete) is rarely heard in poems. The Left reply that ‘track’ (kata ato) is the same.
Shunzei’s judgement: The poem of the Left sounds grandiose, but there is something dubious about it. When starting with Ōhara (ōhara ya), one expects it to be followed by ‘Oshio Mountain’, as it suggests the field of Ōhara. Without that following Oshio Mountain, when one encounters Ōhara, on recollects both ‘misty clear waters’ and ‘waters of a pure, peaceful well’, and does not know to which the Ōhara refers. There is no precedent at all for Imperial vists to the Ōhara which lies at the foot of Mount Hiei. There are, however, for visits to Mount Oshio. In the poem on ‘waters of a pure, peaceful well’, it states that ‘though there are no birds, we visit for our pleasure’, so it would be impossible for the ‘white banded hawk’ to take prey a’wing there. I have heard ‘tracks’ before, but the poem has little sense of truly knowing ‘Saga Field’, yet there have, without doubt, been Imperial visits there, so ‘tracks’ must be the better poem.