| 1 | A dialogue on poverty
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| 2 |
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| 3 | On the night when the rain beats,
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| 4 | Driven by the wind,
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| 5 | On the night when the snowflakes mingle
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| 6 | With a sleety rain,
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| 7 | I feel so helplessly cold.
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| 8 | I nibble at a lump of salt,
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| 9 | Sip the hot, oft-diluted dregs of _sake_;
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| 10 | And coughing, snuffling,
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| 11 | And stroking my scanty beard,
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| 12 | I say in my pride,
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| 13 | "There's none worthy, save I!"
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| 14 | But I shiver still with cold.
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| 15 | I pull up my hempen bedclothes,
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| 16 | Wear what few sleeveless clothes I have,
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| 17 | But cold and bitter is the night!
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| 18 | As for those poorer than myself,
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| 19 | Their parents must be cold and hungry,
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| 20 | Their wives and children beg and cry.
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| 21 | Then, how do you struggle through life?
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| 22 |
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| 23 | Wide as they call the heaven and earth,
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| 24 | For me they have shrunk quite small;
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| 25 | Bright though they call the sun and moon,
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| 26 | They never shine for me.
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| 27 | Is it the same with all men,
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| 28 | Or for me alone?
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| 29 | By rare chance I was born a man
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| 30 | And no meaner than my fellows,
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| 31 | But, wearing unwadded sleeveless clothes
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| 32 | In tatters, like weeds waving in the sea,
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| 33 | Hanging from my shoulders,
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| 34 | And under the sunken roof,
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| 35 | Within the leaning walls,
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| 36 | Here I lie on straw
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| 37 | Spread on bare earth,
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| 38 | With my parents at my pillow,
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| 39 | And my wife and children at my feet,
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| 40 | All huddled in grief and tears.
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| 41 | No fire sends up smoke
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| 42 | At the cooking-place,
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| 43 | And in the cauldron
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| 44 | A spider spins its web.
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| 45 | With not a grain to cook,
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| 46 | We moan like the night thrush.
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| 47 | Then, "to cut," as the saying is,
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| 48 | "The ends of what is already too short,"
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| 49 | The village headman comes,
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| 50 | With rod in hand, to our sleeping place,
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| 51 | Growling for his dues.
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| 52 | Must it be so hopeless --
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| 53 | The way of this world?
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| 54 |
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| 55 | -- Yamanoue Okura
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