Classic Poem

Light showers drizzling down (why do my eyes mist over?),
every moment lightning flares, rips the clouds and my heart.

It's like a tattered cloud — but still,
should one's heart be wet for it?
Death plucked my first blossom in the bud,
cut and devoured the first piece of my heart.
Infant promise, tearful eyes —
smooth and deft the frosty hand fell on her.

I saw the motherland and wept, plunged into the wave —
in the time of darkness a heaven like this in tears!
My second son hid my shoes in the niche on the stairs
and said, " Don't go, daddy, " tried to stop me —
I scolded and fled into the net.
" Did father call me? " he said
and went to heaven, scorched with hunger.

The oldest boy — lotus from the mud —
his intellect a flame,
deeply wise and quiet in his ways:
barren ground, the sunshine brief and the leaves blighted —
the gardener a cheat; he left off speaking
and abandoned me.
When his mother remembers her lips tremble,
her heart stung to tears.
These birds would not stay in my house.
I could not make them happy,