Left (Win).
信樂の外山は雪も消えにしを冬を殘すや谷の夕風
| shigaraki no toyama wa yuki mo kienishi o fuyu o nokosu ya tani no yūkaze |
From Shigaraki’s Mountains, the snow Has gone, yet Does winter remain in The valleys’ evening breeze? |
17
Right.
春風は吹くと聞けども柴の屋はなをさむしろにいこそ寢られね
| haru kaze wa fuku to kikedomo shiba no ya wa nao samushiro ni i koso nerarene |
The spring breeze Blows, I hear, yet My twig-roofed hut is Yet chill: beneath a threadbare blanket I cannot fall asleep. |
18
Shunzei states the first part of the Left’s poem is ‘elevated in tone’, but that the final line is problematic: a reference to ‘morning’ might have been better, or just to the ‘valleys’ breeze’, but this would not have fitted the syllable count. If the intention had been to add a sense of ‘darkness’ to the poem, an expression such as ‘the valleys, shadowed by the crags’ would have been better. As for the Right’s poem, the image of the ‘twig-roofed hut’ is lonely, but the overlaying of the ‘cold’ with ‘blanket’ (in the original poem ‘samushiro’ is a play-on-words with both senses) is pedestrian, and so the Left’s poem, despite its faults, is adjudged the winner.