Translated by professor Michael Branch.

O wait and I will start
my dear gentle mother
O to wake you
at this festival that comes round year by year
from this precious grave
this soft soil.

O soft soil
crumble from the precious grave
of my dear
precious gentle mother
my dear darling.

O my dear
gentle mother
and my dear darling father
O crumble, soft soil
open both your ears
and hear my
sorrowful creature's
yearning lamentations
and I will wake you.

O your dear child
a creature weighed down with grief and care
O how I reared these
gentle young ones
alone without a husband's
dear help.

O my dear gentle mother
O how you kept reminding me:
"You are my gentle young one
with lovely hair
O when you rear your own dear children
your gentle young ones
O ask the dear gods
for a better destiny
for your own ones blooming with golden locks".

O my dear mother
surely I had no right to ask
the dear precious gods
to take from that one, my dear
eldest child
from my darling in his dear prime
his wedded wife
and she left
her tiny young one
blooming with golden locks.

O my afflicted
heart breaks:
how he grew up
the sweet-minded child
with a gentle mother
O how he took her
for his own gentle mother –
O he was tiny
but he understood.

O surely you whisper to me
my gentle mother
when I am weary
I entrust to your care
my grandson Genya.

O, O perhaps you have not
your own free will
among the dear precious gods
my dear gentle mother.

O, O look, he has now reached
eighteen years of age:
now I am starting to send him up
for precious military service
and he has never known
the dear tenderness
of his own gentle mother.
O my afflicted heart full of yearning
breaks and pines away.

O, O, O surely you bore me
my gentle mother
at the time the bright cuckoos called:
O, O my destiny
is bright with the cuckoos' brightness:
O, O how my yearning life
could still come to an end:
O, O that I have not borne
any with lovely hair:
O, O, O that I have only
choice daughters-in-law
and maybe I am starting
- so soon! - to grow old.

O, O, O my true mamma, my flower of a mamma,
even for the twinkling of an eye
for one minute I cannot forget you
O how you said to me
in the days of your suffering:
"My dear young one
O do not wander to any shore
away from your own hearth."