SHITE (to Tsure)
Times out of mind am I here setting up this bright branch, this silky
wood with the charms painted in it as fine as the web you'd get in the
grass-cloth of Shinobu, that they'd be still selling you in this
mountain.

SHITE AND TSURE
Tangled, we are entangled. Whose fault was it, dear? tangled up as the
grass patterns are tangled up in this coarse cloth, or as the little
Mushi that lives on and chirrups in dried sea-weed. We do not know where
are to-day our tears in the undergrowth of this eternal wilderness. We
neither wake nor sleep, and passing our nights in a sorrow which is in
the end a vision, what are these scenes of spring to us? This thinking in
sleep of someone who has no thought of you, is it more than a dream? and
yet surely it is the natural way of love. In our hearts there is much and
in our bodies nothing, and we do nothing at all, and only the waters of
the river of tears flow quickly.

CHORUS
Narrow is the cloth of Kefu, but wild is that river, that torrent of the
hills, between the beloved and the bride.

The cloth she had woven is faded, the thousand one hundred nights were
night-trysts watched out in vain.

WAKI (not recognizing the nature of the speakers)
Strange indeed, seeing these town-people here.
They seem like man and wife,
And the lady seems to be holding something