WITCH.
How strange! I see a fine lady whom I do not know riding in a broken coach. She clutches at the shafts of another coach from which the oxen have been unyoked. And in the second coach sits one who seems a new wife.[133] The lady of the broken coach is weeping, weeping. It is a piteous sight.
Can this be she?
COURTIER.
It would not be hard to guess who such a one might be. Come, spirit, tell us your name!
ROKUJŌ.
In this Sahā World[134] where days fly like the lightning’s flash
None is worth hating and none worth pitying.
This I knew. Oh when did folly master me?
You would know who I am that have come drawn by the twanging of your bow? I am the angry ghost of Rokujō, Lady of the Chamber.
Long ago I lived in the world.
I sat at flower-feasts among the clouds.[135]
On spring mornings I rode out
In royal retinue and on autumn nights
Among the red leaves of the Rishis’ Cave
I sported with moonbeams,
With colours and perfumes
My senses sated.
I had splendour then;
But now I wither like the Morning Glory
Whose span endures not from dawn to midday.
I have come to clear my hate.
(She then quotes the Buddhist saying, “Our sorrows in this world are not caused by others; for even when others wrong us we are suffering the retribution of our own deeds in a previous existence.”