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- A dialogue on poverty
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- 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?
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- 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?
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- -- Yamanoue Okura
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