Birds of Sorrow
277
- (A stage attendant comes to the Wife where she sits and gives her the folded kimono without a sleeve which the Hunter was wearing in Part I. She holds it up on her outstretched arms toward the Monk.)
Monk: That kimono long treasured as a memory of him … this sleeve long carried….
- (The Monk takes out the sleeve and holds it out toward the Wife.)
Wife: Upon taking them out….
Monk: … and comparing them well….
- (The Monk looks fixedly at the kimono which the Wife is holding.)
Chorus: … there can be no doubt left.
- (The Monk comes to the Wife and lays the sleeve in her arms upon the kimono. She bends her head over the articles, examining them closely, while the Chorus speaks for her.)
The cloth is the same—thin, crude stuff, for summer’s wearing … thin, crude stuff for summer’s wearing. And see! a sleeve is gone—this sleeve exactly fits…. It comes from him! O so dearly longed for….
- (The Wife bows low over the garments in a gesture of weeping. The Chorus now explains the actions of the Monk as he takes a large, black-lacquered hat from a stage attendant at the Flute Pillar, brings it to the very front of the stage and, placing it on the floor, kneels before it facing the audience.)
And forthwith does the Monk chant countless prayers of requiem. And especially, even as the dead one had entreated, does he offer up that very cloak of straw, offer up that very hat of sedge.
- (The Monk rubs his rosary between his palms over the hat and intones a Buddhist Sutra.)
