Classic Poem

" More and more like the floating duckweed... "
Someone returned to the tribe this evening
Amid bamboo fences scattered over the mountain
Pondering the pains and regrets over history
Too much rice wine to drink
Makes for incoherent babbling
Mizuno, you've lived a pretty good life
What makes you suffer so?
Your hut was completed before winter
The peach trees blossomed in the saddle of the mountain
In the second month
Someone married a girl from a different village
Everyone is overjoyed
So what is it that worries you?
" Three hundred years ago our ancestors
Wove fishnets and caught fish
Large sailing ships from the west appeared
blocking out the sun
Fifty years later they shunned the farmed plains
Returning to the forests to hunt
Aside from fighting over land
We lived in peace with each other
When the Japanese came, what was termed " civilizing the savages"
Was in fact flogging, from the coast to the mountains
We've been like duckweed the last century... "
Someone returned to the tribe this evening
Rubbing the wound of history getting drunk
No one doubted his suffering
Perhaps he was mourning for his far-flung relatives
Perhaps he was angry at the destitution of the tribe
But not questioning justice and love
Though quietly drinking and talking
Though someone keeps leaving for distant places
Like a ripe fruit falling from the tree.