The Right team have no comments to make about the Left’s poem, but the Left state that the initial section of the Right’s poem is ‘prosaic [heikai]’. Shunzei agrees, saying that the term ‘spare arrows’ is ‘unsuitable diction for poetry’ [uta kotoba ni yoroshikarazaru] and so the Left’s poem must be adjudged the winner.
The Right team remark here that they were ‘unable to grasp’ the first line of the Left’s poem, possibly suggesting a judgement that kokoro aru, which I’ve translated here as ‘Souls stirred’, and which refers to the ability to be moved emotionally by phenomena, or events, was an unsuitable expression for mere ‘guardsmen’. The Left team state bluntly that the reference to ‘the folk above the clouds’ was ‘unsuited to this rite’, meaning the New Year archery contest, in which members of the higher nobility, the ‘folk above the clouds’, did not participate.
The Right team state simply that they ‘don’t understand the content’ of the Left’s poem, while the Left remark airily of the Right’s that it ‘hits the topic dead on!’ Nevertheless, Shunzei says that the Left’s poem, ‘seems charming, with its image of letters to His Majesty attached to staves’, and awards it the victory.