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FURUHI, A LAMENT 
(Based on a poem by a Japanese poet of the seventh century, Yamanoe Okura)

What in all the world is most desired?
The precious ores, the seven precious stones?
Yet what are these to one
whom Heaven gave its fairest pearl,
that gem love brought forth to day,
our son Furuhi, our little son?
O why did Heaven lend to us
its fairest jewel?

When the star of evening shone,
he wakened us, laughing, jumping,
and when the star of evening shone,
he lay between us, there to be
a lily cupped by two green leaves.
But like that short-lived flower,
his freshness faded, wilted, paled,
as he grew weak and sick upon his bed
until like bird of night death came
to snatch its prey.

O Lord of sky and earth, tell why
you, possessor of both realms,
took from this scant store our gem,
our most loved only flower.

And Lord of dark shades of night,
to whose realm of nothing falls
all the realms of being owned,
why did you seize with such unseemly haste
what in full time was yours with better grace?
What cause had you to deny
a little season's bliss?

O Lord of dreams and visions, why
did you, as though consoling, promise
to return to us our pearl
and let us see him smile again,
and let us hear his laughter as before,
at our waking, till cold reason
with vial of gall poisoned the cup of dawn
that we felt his death not once,
but again with each returning day?

O Lord whose name we do not know,
lead him gently and with parent's care,
or call us soon that as before
our shoulders bear him high.

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