Okaru and Kampei

Okaru is weeping

Like a velvet hollyhock trembling in the long twilight,

Like the touch of soft flannel,

Like daylight fading from buttercup grass,

And like a ball of dandelion fuzz floating buoyantly.

However much she cries, she does not run out of tears,

Kampei is dead, Kampei is dead,

The young and handsome Kampei has committed

Harakiri.

Okaru weeps, thinking of the smell of a young man.

"It was," she remembers, "stifling like onions stored

in the malting-room;

He felt so soft, like the outdoor light of May,

The man's breath burning like black tea.

When I was embraced, the daytime salt flats glistened

blue,

And the nerve of a white parsley blossom sharpened,

became pale and dry.

I remember the trembling of his inner thighs, and my

lips that I let him kiss.

On the day we parted his white hand smelled strongly

of gunpowder;

I had been thoughtfully cutting vegetables until I got

on the palanquin."

But Kampei has killed himself.

Okaru is given over to her own pleasure,

Enticed by so many sensuous memories,

Like an orphan in a hothouse.

(Outside the windows of the puppet show red oranges

shone in the setting autumn sun, and the whistle of a

river steamer was heard from the foot of the city,

hidden in a yellow haze.)

Okaru is weeping

With a beautiful gesture, as if utterly overwhelmed

by emotion.

Carried away by the impetuous melody of Shamisen,

In time with an impassioned passage of the Gidayu,

Weeping and weeping as if she will not stop until she

drowns,

Okaru is weeping.

(Color, odor, and music.

Who cares about Kampei?)