Round Six
Left
夜もすがらまつにはなかでほととぎすあしたのはらにひとこゑぞきく
| yomosugara matsu ni wa nakade hototogisu ashita no hara ni hitokoe zo kiku | All through the night I pined without a song, O, cuckoo Then with the morn on Ashita plain I hear a single call! |
Cell of Fragrant Cloud
25
Right (Win)
五月にはしばなくやとぞほととぎすなほうらまちにさぬるよもなし
| satsuki ni wa shiba naku ya to zo hototogisu nao uramachi ni sanuru yo mo nashi | In the Fifth Month Incessantly might he sing—I think, so The cuckoo I am already eagerly awaiting, Sleeping not at all on any night! |
Cell of Compassionate Light
26
The Left’s poem seems to have an extraordinary conception, yet its diction is insufficient. The Right’s poem is old-fashionedly artless and thus has elements which are entirely poetically backward-looking.
The Left’s poem is particularly oddly composed in that is fails to account for the essential meaning of Ashita Plain. Does saying a ‘single call now’[1] mean that that one could wait expectantly during the day, too?
As for the Right’s poem, a cuckoo is not something that calls incessantly, yet I wonder if this composition is not, in some form, a plea that it would? As for ‘eagerly await’, well, I feel that it would be better to have ‘awaited’ rather than ‘awaiting’—that sounds like something one would have done ‘nothing but’ first. It seems a bit distasteful, like a poem by someone who has been perusing the Collection of a Myriad Leaves.
[1] On a folding screen for the Coming-of-Age Ceremony of the Northern Princess. 行きやらで山ぢくらしつほととぎす今ひとこゑのきかまほしさに yukiyarade / yamaji kurashitsu / hototogisu / ima hitokoe no / kikamahoshisa ni ‘I cannot go ahead / As twilight falls upon the mountain paths / For a cuckoo’s / Single call now / Is what I long to hear…’ Minamoto no Kintada (SIS II: 106)
Round Twelve
Left (Tie)
あらし吹くまくずが原に鳴く鹿は恨みてのみや妻をこふらん
| arashi fuku makuzu ga hara ni naku shika wa uramite nomi ya tsuma o kouran | Storm winds blow Across the arrowroot upon the plain Where bells a stag— Might it be with bitterness, alone, that He yearns for a mate? |
Shun’e
47
Right
山里は妻こひかぬる鹿の音にさもあらぬ我もねられざりけり
| yamazato wa tsuma koikanuru shika no ne ni sa mo aranu ware mo nerarezarikeri | In a mountain retreat, Filled with too much yearning for his mate A stag bells out— ‘Tis not true of me, yet Still I cannot sleep. |
Lay Priest Master
48
The Left’s stag’s bell seeming to despise the arrowroot field and the Right’s inability to sleep on hearing a stag belling at a mountain retreat are both evocative of lonely sadness and neither sounds at all inferior to the other in the depths of the emotion they convey, so I find myself quite unable to distinguish between them.
