Felicitations

Round One

Left

みどりなるまつかげひたすいけ水にちよのすみかとみゆるやどかな

midori naru matsukage hitasu ikemizu ni chiyo no sumika to miyuru yado kana

Evergreen The pine tree’s shapes sink Into the pond waters— A residence for a thousand ages Does that dwelling seem!

Lord Dainagon
57

Right (Win)

ちとせともいろにはいでていはし水ながれむほどは君がよなれば

chitose to mo iro ni wa idete iwashimizu nagaremu hodo wa kimi ga yo nareba

For a thousand years or more Does its hue emerge— Spring waters from the rocks Might flow as long as My Lord’s reign will be, so…

Lord Chūnagon
58

What on earth might be the colour of the Left poem’s ‘pine tree’s shapes sink’ and the Right poem’s ‘thousand years’ hue’? When one talks about ‘hue’ that means ‘scarlet’ and, in addition, it’s used of blossoms or autumn leaves. I have yet to see wisteria colouring the water in numerous private collections. The two poems are about the same, but the Right is marred by a series of faults.

The Left’s ‘shapes sink’ is extremely vague. ‘Sink’ means to submerge an object in water. One could certainly compose about a pine tree’s branches sinking, but how can we accept ‘shapes sink’ to mean an object’s reflection from beneath the water in the absence of a poem as precedent? The end is extremely, charming, though.

The poem of the Right doesn’t have anything special about it. It’s a pedestrian affair which doesn’t seem to show much evidence of thought. How are we to distinguish between a poem which is hackneyed but lacking any faults and one which is vague?