Plays

the waves,
Sorrow between mandarin ducks,
Who have been in love
Since time out of mind.
Sorrow⁠—
There is more sorrow between the united
Though they move in the one same world.
O low “Remembering-grass,”
I do not forget to weep
At the sound of the rain upon you,
My tears are a rain in the silence,
O heart of the seldom clearing. Maidservant Say to whomsoever it concerns that Yugiri has come. Wife What! you say it is Yugiri? There is no need for a servant. Come to this side! in here! How is this, Yugiri, that you are so great a stranger? Yet welcome. I have cause of complaint. If you were utterly changed, why did you send me no word? Not even a message in the current of the wind? Maidservant Truly I wished to come, but his Honour gave me no leisure. For three years he kept me in that very ancient city. Wife You say it was against your heart to stay in the city? While even in the time of delights I thought of its blossom, until sorrow had grown the cloak of my heart. Chorus

As the decline of autumn
In a country dwelling,
With the grasses failing and fading⁠—
As men’s eyes fail⁠—
As men’s eyes fail,
Love has utterly ceased.
Upon what shall she lean tomorrow?
A dream of the autumn, three years,
Until the sorrow of those dreams awakes
Autumnal echoes within her.
Now former days are changed,
They have left no shadow or trace;
And if there were no lies in all the world
Then there might come some pleasure
Upon the track of men’s words.
Alas, for her foolish heart!
How foolish her trust has been.

Wife What strange thing is it beyond there that takes the forms of sound? Tell me. What is it? Maidservant A villager beating a silk-board. Wife Is that all? And I am weary as an old saying. When the wandering Sobu38 of China was in the Mongol country he also had left a wife and children, and she, aroused upon the clear cold nights, climbed her high tower and beat such a silk-board, and had perhaps some purpose of her heart. For that far-murmuring cloth could move his sleep⁠—that is the tale⁠—though he were leagues away. Yet I have stretched my board with patterned cloths, which curious birds brought through the twilit utter solitude, and hoped with such that I might ease my heart. Maidservant Boards are rough work, hard even for the poor, and you of high rank have done this to ease your heart! Here, let me arrange them, I am better fit for such business. Wife Beat then. Beat out our resentment. Maidservant It’s a coarse mat; we can never be sure. Chorus

The voice of the pine-trees sinks ever into the web!
The voice of the pine-trees, now falling,
Shall make talk in the night.
It is cold.

Wife Autumn it is, and news rarely comes in your fickle wind, the frost comes bearing no message. Chorus Weariness tells of the night. Wife Even a man in a very far village might see.⁠ ⁠… Chorus Perhaps the moon will not call upon her, saying: “Whose night-world is this?” Wife O beautiful season, say also this time is toward autumn, “The evening moves to an end.” Chorus

The stag’s voice has bent her heart toward sorrow,
Sending the evening winds which she does not see,
We cannot see the tip of the branch.
The last leaf falls without witness.
There is an awe in the shadow,
And even the moon is quiet,
With the love-grass under the eaves.

Wife My blind soul hangs like a curtain studded with dew. Chorus

What a night to unsheave her sorrows⁠—
An hour for magic⁠—
And that cloth-frame stands high on the palace;
The wind rakes it from the north.

Wife They beat now fast and now slow⁠—are they silk-workers down in the village? The moon-river pours on the west. Chorus (strophe)

The wandering Sobu is asleep in the North country,
And here in the East-sky the autumnal wind is working about from the West.
Wind, take up the sound she is beating upon her coarse-webbed cloth.

Chorus (antistrophe)

Beware of even the pines about the eaves,
Lest they confuse the sound.
Beware that you do not lose the sound of the travelling storm,
That travels after your travels.
Take up the sound of this beating of the cloths.

Go where her lord is, O Wind; my heart reaches out and can be seen by him; I pray that you keep him still dreaming.

Wife Aoi! if the web is broken, who, weary with time, will then come to seek me out? If at last he should come to seek me, let him call in the deep of time. Cloths are changed by recutting, hateful! love thin as a summer cloth! Let my lord’s life be even so slight, for I have no sleep under the moon. O let me go on with my cloths! Chorus

The love of a god with a goddess
Is but for the one night in passing,
So thin are the summer cloths!
The river-waves of the sky
Have cut through our time like shears,
They have kept us apart with dew.
There are tears on the Kaji leaf,
There is dew upon the helm-bar
Of the skiff in the twisting current.
Will it harm the two sleeves of the gods
If he pass?
As a floating shadow of the water grass,
That the ripples break on the shore?
O foam, let him be as brief.

Wife The seventh month is come to its seventh day; we are hard on the time of long nights, and I would send him the sadness of these ten thousand voices⁠—the colour of the moon, the breath-colour of the wind, even the points of frost that assemble in the shadow. A time that brings awe to the heart, a sound of beaten cloths, and storms in the night, a crying in the storm, a sad sound of the crickets, make one sound in the falling dew, a whispering lamentation, hera, hera, a sound in the cloth of beauty. Maidservant What shall I say to all this? A man has just come from the city. The master will not come this year. It seems as if⁠ ⁠… Chorus

The heart, that thinks that it will think no more, grows fainter; outside in