yo no naka wa tsune ni mogamo na nagisa kogu ama no obune no tsunade kanashi mo
This mundane world, I would be ever so! Rowing through the calm, A fisher’s tiny boat’s Hawsers move me most! [i]
572
[i] See: A poem from Michinoku. みちのくはいづくはあれどしほがまの浦こぐ舟のつなでかなしも michinoku wa / izuku wa aredo / shiogama no / ura kogu fune no / tsunade kanashi mo ‘O, Michinoku, / This may be true elsewhere, too, but / At Shiogama / Bay, a rowing boat’s / Hawsers move me most!’ Anonymous (Kokinshū XX: 1088)
mizutori no aoba no yama ya ika naran kozue o somuru kesa no shigure ni
Waterfowl fly above Aoba Mountain— O, what is to become Of the treetops dyed By this morning’s shower?
Lord Akinaka 7
Right (T – Win)
かきくもり蜑の小ぶねにふく苫の下とほるまで時雨れしにけり
kakikumori ama no obune ni fuku toma no shita tōru made shigureshinikeri
Clouds rake in above The fisher’s tiny boat— Through its rush-woven roof And even beneath A shower has fallen.
Lord Michitsune 8
Toshiyori states: Continuing on from ‘Waterfowl fly above / Aoba Mountain’ with ‘the treetops dyed’ is simple and straightforward. The latter poem’s emphasis on the fisher’s tiny boat is an unexpected expression, yet because it is not a fault, I make this poem the winner.
Mototoshi states: saying ‘Waterfowl fly above / Aoba Mountain’ is extremely hackneyed, yet the poem of the Right has ‘Clouds rake in above / The fisher’s tiny boat— / Through its rush-woven roof’: both spring showers and summer ones, too, are not things which fall constantly, so it is difficult to believe that they could fall ‘even beneath’. So, I have to determine that a shower dyeing the treetops is a little better.
