Round Four

Left (Win)

あたらしきただひとこゑをほととぎすいかなるさとになきとよむらん

atarashiki tada hitokoe o hototogisu ika naru sato ni nakitoyomuran

How fine Simply is your single call, O, cuckoo, What might be the estate which Resounds with your song?

Cell of the Fragrant Elephant
21

Right

いかばかりあはれならましほととぎすかくまたれてしきなかましかば

ika bakari aware naramashi hototogisu kaku matareteshi kinakamashikaba

How deeply Moving might it be? For a cuckoo To have long awaited and He then comes to call…

Cell of Everlasting Truth
22

In regard to the Left’s poem, in the Poetry Match held in Engi 3, there was a compostion which went ‘Until in Kataoka / The plains of Ashita / Does resound / The mountain cuckoos / Are singing now!’[i] When this was recited, His Majesty laughed and so it was not read aloud all the way to the end. The expression ‘resound’ is poor. The diction of the Right’s poem is terribly stilted and really doesn’t trip off the tongue, but strictly speaking it has no particular faults. I make it the winner.

The Left’s poem seems move my heart to the greatest degree. However, it really is the case that ‘resounding with song’ is something which happens after hearing it—that’s when it would seem right to compose ‘come resound with song’. It’s extremely imprudent to guess and say that somewhere ‘might resound with song’ without hearing it. And yet, there is the conception of there being times, too, when the cuckoo doesn’t sing. In the Right’s poem ‘To have long awaited’ lacks harmony, and I would want there to be a break there, so I should say that the Left wins.

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[i] This poem is Teiji’in uta’awase 48.