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