| A dialogue on poverty | |
| On the night when the rain beats, | |
| Driven by the wind, | |
| On the night when the snowflakes mingle | |
| With a sleety rain, | |
| I feel so helplessly cold. | |
| I nibble at a lump of salt, | |
| Sip the hot, oft-diluted dregs of _sake_; | |
| And coughing, snuffling, | |
| And stroking my scanty beard, | |
| I say in my pride, | |
| "There's none worthy, save I!" | |
| But I shiver still with cold. | |
| I pull up my hempen bedclothes, | |
| Wear what few sleeveless clothes I have, | |
| But cold and bitter is the night! | |
| As for those poorer than myself, | |
| Their parents must be cold and hungry, | |
| Their wives and children beg and cry. | |
| Then, how do you struggle through life? | |
| Wide as they call the heaven and earth, | |
| For me they have shrunk quite small; | |
| Bright though they call the sun and moon, | |
| They never shine for me. | |
| Is it the same with all men, | |
| Or for me alone? | |
| By rare chance I was born a man | |
| And no meaner than my fellows, | |
| But, wearing unwadded sleeveless clothes | |
| In tatters, like weeds waving in the sea, | |
| Hanging from my shoulders, | |
| And under the sunken roof, | |
| Within the leaning walls, | |
| Here I lie on straw | |
| Spread on bare earth, | |
| With my parents at my pillow, | |
| And my wife and children at my feet, | |
| All huddled in grief and tears. | |
| No fire sends up smoke | |
| At the cooking-place, | |
| And in the cauldron | |
| A spider spins its web. | |
| With not a grain to cook, | |
| We moan like the night thrush. | |
| Then, "to cut," as the saying is, | |
| "The ends of what is already too short," | |
| The village headman comes, | |
| With rod in hand, to our sleeping place, | |
| Growling for his dues. | |
| Must it be so hopeless -- | |
| The way of this world? | |
| -- Yamanoue Okura |