Robert Nakamura

After the siege of Odawara (1590), Ujimasa and his younger brother Ujiteru were forced to commit seppuku. This was Ujimasa’s death poem, translated by A. L. Sadler:

Autumn wind of eve,
Blow away the clouds that mass
O’er the moon’s pure light
And the mists that cloud our mind,
Do thou sweep away as well.

Now we disappear,
Well, what must we think of it?
From the sky we came.
Now we may go back again.
That’s at least one point of view.

Ujimasa

Beautiful verses in the face of death.