Song of the Byakkotai

Flaming fires, burning higher,
trees that lied of cindered spires
birchwood formed the funeral pyre
to deceive the twenty sons.

Loyal soldiers they did fight,
but in the madness of that night,
they caught not the ruse new made
around their sleeping lord.

And thus so counseled by their oaths,
they took their blades unsheathed and hoped
that though they failed their lord to save
that they would join him shortly.

Nineteen blades did find their rest,
nineteen homes with one boy less,
and only one did live to see
that their sweet lord was safe.

And now the markers line the road
and if one asks an elder old
he will tell about the night
that nineteen boys did stop their light.

 

© Ryan Masaaki Yokota

Next in the trilogy