musubiken chigiri mo tsurashi kusamakura matsu yūgure mo yado o tanomite
Tangled Brief bonds are chill; With a grassy pillow She awaits the evening and A request for lodging.
Takanobu
1164
Left and Right state together: both poems have only a faint conception of entertainers.
In judgement: both Left and Right have a ‘grassy pillow’ (kusamakura) and a faint conception of entertainers, as the Gentlemen have already stated. They seem to me to somehow resemble the poem by the Left in Round Nine. The Left’s ‘dewfall drops tangled’ (tsuyu musubioku) and the Right’s ‘brief bonds are chill’ (chigiri mo tsurashi) are both elegant. Once again, I make this a tie.
The Right state: the Left’s poem has no faults we can mention. The Gentlemen of the Left state: our feelings are the same as those of the Right
In judgement: both Left and Right are on ‘crickets’ (kirigirisu) and their configuration and diction sound equally elegantly beautiful. I feel that the Right, with ‘deep in dew and sad, I wish you were’ (tsuyu fukaki aware o omoe), is somewhat lacking in the conception of the poet’s own love, but the Left, with ‘I alone am wringing out my sleeves, I feel’ (ware nomi shiboru sode ka to omou ni), has an excellent conception of love, so I must state that the Left is the winner.
Left and Right together: we find no faults to mention.
In judgement: it would be impossible to ever exhaust the overtones of feeling in ‘a stag belling in the meadow on an autumn evening’ (shika naku nobe no aki no yūgure) in the Left’s poem; in the Right’s poem the configuration and conception of ‘awaiting him, my sleeves, too, are wet with tears’ (hito matsu sode mo namida sou nari) is richly evocative. I find it extremely hard to put both poems down, so this round, again, is a tie of quality.
Both Left and Right state: we can grasp the sense of the opposing poem.
In judgement: I am unable to tell what it is that ‘does not come one evening’ (konu yūgure). ‘Whispers the autumn wind’ (akikaze no koe) is also perhaps rather novel. The Right’s ‘Garden pines, o, wind!’ (niwa no matsukaze) sounds pleasant. It should win.
The Right state: we would have preferred it to have been ‘is it that my heart drifts?’ (ukinuru kokoro ya). The Left state: the Right’s poem lacks faults.
In judgement: the final sections of both poems seem fine. For strict correctness, the Left should have had ‘my drifting heart does seem confused’ (ukinuru kokoro wa mayourashi), but because this would not fit with the poem, he has left it as ‘in seeming confusion’ (mayouran). The poem is fine as it is, without introducing ‘is it that my heart’ (kokoro ya). I don’t know what to make of the expression ‘to your home’ (kimigari), but ‘how may layers must the clouds pass though on the heavenly paths?’ (kumo wa iku e zo sora no kayoiji) is charming. Then again, the Right’s ‘buries my heart beneath the evening skies?’ (kokoro o uzumu yūgure no sora) has a gentle beauty about it. Thus, the round should tie.