The Right state: the Left’s poem is overly lacking in thought. The Left state: no faults.
In judgement: the Left has ‘for that cruel one’ (ukibito yue ni) – does this mean perhaps that one is unable to sleep as a result of someone’s cruelty? The reference to ‘a shrimp among the seaweed’ (mo ni sumu mushi) in the Right’s latter section feels overly abrupt and sounds lacking in connection to anything else in the poem. ‘That cruel one’ sounds somewhat insufficient, but it certainly has no faults. Thus, the Left wins.
The Right state: the Left’s poem has no faults to indicate. The Left state: the Right’s poem is clichéd.
In judgement: the Right, in addition to being clichéd, can say no more than that love means wet sleeves. The Left’s ‘grasses’ roots’ (suga no ne) is certainly better.
The Right state: the Left’s initial line is unsatisfactory. The Left state: the Right’s central line is also unsatisfactory.
In judgement: it is not just that the Right’s central line is unsatisfactory. A channel buoy, planted in a river and rotting away is quite a commonplace occurrence. For something to be ‘afloat’ (yurasaru), you would need to refer to flotsam, either of wood or bamboo. The Left should win.
Neither Left nor Right finds any fault this round.
Shunzei’s judgement: The final section of the Left’s poem a kind of charming form [hitotsu no sugata nite okashiku haberu], but ‘rocky shore’ (ara’iso) sounds frightful [osoroshiku kikoehabere]. The Right’s ‘plucking dropwort’ (seri tsumu) is archaic, but not objectionable [furugoto nareba nadarakani wa haberubeki], but saying ‘a trace within my heart’ (kokoro no ato o) gives an extremely relaxed and vague feeling [itaku kasumeru kokochishite], and so it is difficult to say that either poem is better.