Left (Win).
もゝしきに引つらなれる梓弓はるも鞆音の珍しき哉
| momoshiki ni hikitsuranareru azusa yumi haru mo tomone no mezurashiki kana |
By the hundredfold palace Arrayed, Catalpa bows: Sprung in springtime, bowstring on bracer: How rare the sound! |
55
Right.
舎人子が鞆うち鳴らす梓弓射手引わたる春は來にけり
| toneriko ga tomo uchinarasu azusa yumi ite hikiwataru haru wa kinikeri |
The guardsmen lads’ Bracers sound; Catalpa bows, Drawn by archers: Springtime is here, indeed! |
56
Again, the Right team have no comments to make about the Left’s poem this round, but the Left say the initial line of the Right’s poem is ‘unsatisfactory’. Shunzei, once again, agrees, remarking that, ‘the initial line sounds like the name of the tree used when referring to adding water to an ink-stone. Again, the Left is the winner.’ What he means by this is that toneriko, ‘guardsmen lads’ was homophonous with the word for ‘ash tree’. The old Japanese extracted a wax from ash trees, which was used to ease the running of sliding doors and shutters, and so by association, toneriko was used in poetry to refer to adding water to an ink-stone so that the ink, produced in solid sticks, would slide over it more easily. This image is inappropriate for a poem about the New Year Archery festival, and so the poem is of inferior quality, compared to the Left’s offering.