Page:Anthology of Japanese Literature.pdf/285

Rh desolate, by the waves laid waste.” … The song is old, but now it is I, I who cannot find, cannot enter the rush-mat hut….

The bird of Soto no Hama, unable to find its nest … raising its voice in grief … nought but weeping….


 * (The Hunter circles slowly to the Shite’s Pillar, where he kneels and makes a gesture of weeping.)

The vague and boundless past, dreamlike…. It was from the ruin of these past pleasures, from these evil days, that I descended to the Yellow Springs, to the bitter waters of Hell….


 * (Still kneeling, the Hunter raises his head.)

My path of life led from birth far out beyond the four estates of man—I was neither scholar, farmer, artisan, nor merchant.

Nor did I delight in life’s four pleasures—music nor chess, books nor paintings.

There was only the coming of day, the coming of night—and the killing!

Thoughtless, wasting the slow spring days in hunting—days meant for the leisurely enjoyment of living. But still the lust for killing was unappeased. And so when the nights of autumn became long and long, I kept them alight, sleepless, with my fishing flares.

Unheedful of the ninety days of summer’s heat….

… of the cold of winter’s mornings….


 * (The Chorus now begins a description of the Hunter’s past life. The Hunter, still kneeling, gradually begins to look from side to side, slowly, as though seeing the scenes being described.)

“The hunter pursues the deer and does not see the mountains,” says the proverb. And truly so it was with me—thinking only of bait and snares, I was like one drugged by the day lily, oblivious to every pain of the body, to every sorrow of the heart. Lashed by wind and wave, even as is the great sand dune of