siratama no
wodae pa makoto
sikaredomo
sono wo mata nuki
pito moti’inikeri
The pearl’s
Strand broke, it’s true,
And yet
It has been threaded once more,
And is in another’s hands!
Of the above poem, it is said, ‘Once, there was a young woman. She was abandoned by her husband, and wed another man. At that time, a certain man, not knowing of her remarriage, sent a poem to her parents asking for her hand. So, her parents, realising the man did not know the details of the situation, sent this poem to him to inform him that their daughter had married once more.’
The Right state: in the Left’s poem, it sounds as if the tears are being scattered by some other person. The Left state: we cannot understand the Right’s poem at all.
Shunzei’s judgement: the entirety of the final section of the Left’s poem is inappropriate [kashinserarezaru]. While the configuration of the Right is elegant, it does, indeed, seem somewhat difficult to grasp. Compared, the round is a tie.