I say,“Mother, just you watch me.”
Then I spur my horse for a wild gallop, and my sword and buckler clash against each other.
The fight becomes so fearful, mother, that it would give you a cold shudder could you see it from your palanquin.
Many of them fly, and a great number are cut to pieces.
I know you are thinking, sitting all by yourself, that your boy must be dead by this time.
But I come to you all stained with blood, and say, “Mother, the fight is over now.”
You come out and kiss me, pressing me to your heart, and you say to yourself,
“I don’t know what I should do if I hadn’t my boy to escort me.”
A thousand useless things happen day after day, and why couldn’t such a thing come true by chance?
It would be like a story in a book.
My brother would say,“Is it possible? I always thought he was so delicate!”
Our village people would all say in amazement,“Was it not lucky that the boy was with his mother?”
THE END
IT is time for me to go, mother; I am going.
When in the paling darkness of the lonely dawn you stretch out your arms for your baby in the bed, I shall say,“Baby is not there!”-mother, I am going.
I shall become a delicate draught of air and caress you; and I shall be ripples in the water when you bathe, and kiss you and kiss you again.
In the gusty night when the rain patters on the leaves you will hear my whisper in your bed, and my laughter will flash with the lightning through the open window into your room.
If you lie awake, thinking of your baby till late into the night, I shall sing to you from the stars, “Sleep mother, sleep.”
On the straying moonbeams I shall steal over your bed, and lie upon your bosom while you sleep.