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1
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
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