Plum Wine Poem by KotaroTakamura

The bottle of plum wine made and left by dead Chieko,
dully stagnant with ten years' weight, holds the light,
and in the amber of a wine cup congeals like a jewel-ball.
When alone late at night in the cold time of early spring
please have this, she said.
I think of the one who left this after dying.
Being threatened with the anxiety of a broken mind,
with the distressing idea of ruin before long,
Chieko took care of things around her.
Seven years of madness finished with death.
The fragrant sweetness of this plum wine found in the kitchen
quietly, quietly, I appreciate.
Even the roar of the world of frenzied angry waves
can hardly violate this moment.
When one wretched life is looked straight at
the world just distantly surrounds it.
Now the night wind has stopped.