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Thus saith the LORD; A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation, and bitter weeping; Rahel weeping for her children refused to be comforted for her children, because they were not.
--Jeremiah 31:15, in the King James Bible
Why did you vanishinto the empty sky?Even the fragile snow,when it falls,falls in this world.
--Izumi Shikibu (和泉式部) b 976?, woman poet of the Heian period, Japan. Her daughter, also a gifted poet, died in childbirth. Translation by Jane Hirshfield and Mariki Aratani in The Ink Dark Moon..
などて君むなしき空に消えにけん淡雪だにもふればふる世に