Why the Thorns Have Grown

The poem opens by asking why thorns have appeared, and then a beloved person starts to cool. Next comes a long confinement under a doubled wheel, a phrase whose sense is unclear to us, so we leave it literal. Gold lies in a channel and has not come out.

Kyo, Bad fortune, is the grade the book prints, and each line gives it reason. Thorns grow, affection fades, confinement goes on and the gold stays where it is.

Considered in the present, these are conditions that harden slowly, with no single event to point at. When did the first thorn show up in a situation you now find hard to move through?