Left
春がすみあみにはりこめ花ちらばうつろひぬべし鶯とめよ
| harugasumi ami ni harikome hana chiraba utsuroinubeshi uguisu tomeyo | The spring haze Spreads its net to catch The blossom—should they scatter, And then, for sure, decline, O, warbler, tarry a while! |
15[1]
Right
春雨の色はこくしもみえなくに野辺のみどりをいかでそむらん
| harusame no iro wa koku shimo mienaku ni nobe no midori o ikade somuran | The spring rain’s Hue great depths Does not seem to have, but How are the meadows with green So deeply dyed? |
16[2]
[1] Shinsen man’yōshū 9; Fubokushō II: 464: ‘Haze’
[2] A minor variant of the poem, with a headnote associating it with this contest, and attributed to Ki no Tomonori, appears in Shokusenzaishū (I: 62): 春雨の色はこしともみえなくに野べのみどりをいかでそむらん harusame no / iro wa koshi tomo / mienaku ni / nobe no midori o / ikade somuran ‘The spring rain’s / Hue no great depths / Does seem to have, but / How are the meadows with green / So deeply dyed?’
A poem from the Poetry Contest held by the Dowager Empress during the Reign of the Kanpyō Emperor.
春雨の色はこしともみえなくに野べのみどりをいかでそむらん
| harusame no iro wa koshi tomo mienaku ni nobe no midori o ikade somuran | The spring rain’s Hue no great depths Does seem to have, but How are the meadows with green So deeply dyed? |
Ki no Tomonori
eft (Tie).
雪消ゆる枯野の下の淺緑去年の草葉や根にかへるらん
| yuki kiyuru kareno no shita no asamidori kozo no kusaba ya ne ni kaeruran |
The snows are gone from off The sere fields, and beneath, Pale green: Last year’s growth seems To have returned to its roots… |
47
Right (Tie).
春雨は去年見し野邊のしるべかは緑にかへる荻の燒原
| harusame wa kozo mishi nobe no shirube ka wa midori ni kaeru ogi no yakehara |
The gentle rains of spring: To the fields I gazed upon last year Do they show the way? For greeness has returned, To the burnt miscanthus grass… |
48
Both teams state that the other’s poem was ‘in the same vein’.
Shunzei judges that the Left’s ‘Last year’s growth seems/To have returned to its roots’ and the Right’s ‘For greeness has returned,/To the burnt miscanthus grass’ are ‘pleasantly charming’, so neither poem can be adjudged the winner.