There is no reason to get lazy, just because it is midwinter. The sun is shining through half-hearted cloud, the road is clear, and there are vegetables to be brought, the green gold of the valley. Batting up an incline on her Mama-chari (short for Mamma Chariot), this woman was demonstrating one of the reasons why old people in Oku-Aizu are not old in the same way as in other places. They brook no opposition to their routine and keep going no matter what.
Many of the householders were taking advantage of the lull in the snow to make inroads into the prodigious piles around their houses and sheds. The young ones, in their seventies, were doing the hard shovelling, while their parents, in their nineties, were merely sledging it round the corner, sometimes thirty yards, and into a stream or off a bank. These citizens are not going gentle into that good night, snowy or not, any time soon. Their vigour comes off them in waves, from their flushed cheeks to their steamy breath, every pedal stroke and shovel-full a lesson ready for the learning.
Do not go gentle into that good night
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Dylan Thomas
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Dylan Thomas
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