A Riddle of Rat and Ox

An old wrong remains unsettled, and the poem asks when it can end. The second line turns to the house and to guarding a beautiful woman inside it. The last two lines are a puzzle, in which ten, one and mouth, stacked, can form the character 吉, good fortune, and the rat and ox are the first two animals of the zodiac cycle. Both identifications are ours, and the verse gives no key to when or how they apply.

Printings differ widely on this lot. The book prints Kyo, Bad fortune, while a note records Han-kichi, Half good fortune, for one edition and Kichi, Good fortune, for another. The unresolved fault and the need for guarding stand behind the harshest of these, and the riddle at the close does not clear them.

Taken today, this resembles an old mistake that keeps hanging over the present while the signs of its ending remain hard to read. How much attention goes to decoding such signs, compared with looking at the fault itself?