Round Six
Left
ふるゆきに山のほそみちうづもれてまれにとひこし人もかよはず
| furu yuki ni yama no hosomichi uzumorete mare ni toikoshi hito mo kayowazu | With the falling snow The mountain’s narrow pathways Are buried; But rarely did he visit and now Cannot make his way at all. |
Cell of Fragrant Cloud
53
Right
あしたつるみわのひばらにゆきふかみみやぎひくをのかよひぢもなし
| ashi tatsuru miwa no hibara ni yuki fukami miyagi hiku o no kayoiji mo nashi | Reeds stand tall in Miwa, where the cypress groves Are deep with snow; To cut sacred timber, the woodsman Has no path to tread at all. |
Cell of Compassionate Light
54
The Left’s poem, in terms of style and diction, entirely grasps the way someone might feel. What a sense of grief! The Right’s poem is composition that fairly drips and delves into playfulness, but in so doing lacks feeling. Truly, the former poem has superlative qualities, resembling a black dragon’s pearl![i] Thus, the Left must win.
The Left does seem to have been composed but simply stated. It possesses a calm elegance. The Right seems to have been created after a great deal of thought. This poem shows effort and the former such calm that I wish to declare them a tie. This may enrage the poets, but the ignorant may give the appearance of being knowledgeable, as they say. I wonder who composed these…
[i] Riju 驪珠 as an abbreviation of riryū no tama 驪龍の珠 (‘black dragon’s pearl’). Mototoshi uses this analogy deliberately as black dragons were associated with winter. The pearl, which they were often depicted as holding or being located in their throat, was a symbol of the dragon’s spiritual development and a marker of its immortality. This is thus an effusive statement of praise for Shōchō’s poem.