I am in a vast black sea, the spaces reach in front of me
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As far as I could ever see, as far again behind.
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And each new world I land upon, with seas and hills and storm and
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dawn,
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Can never fill me when I'm gone or overwhelm my mind.
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But I am haunted by a bamboo wind
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The clatter of the bones of our misbegotten earth
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The wail of a memory of how our fears
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Destroyed the precious cradle of our birth.
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Bamboo glades within my head are spectres of the lands we fled
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With all our second chances dead we could not hope to stay
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Bamboo dances in my night, hides the stars that watch my flight
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It moans and rattles of the blight that made us run away.
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But I am haunted by a bamboo wind
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The clatter of the bones of our misbegotten earth
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The wail of a memory of how our fears
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Destroyed the precious cradle of our birth.
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Bamboo forest, dead or lost, overlaps these points of frost
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Knowing what these stars have cost I feel a bleak despair
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Ancestors revile our name, curse the wombs from which we came
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Dispossessed and drowned in shame, with no home anywhere.
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(twice)
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And I am haunted by a bamboo wind
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The clatter and the moaning of a world we see no more
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The rustle of the ghost of leaves in dappled sun
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The ruined song of every shattered shore.
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Words and music: Kathy Mar
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Copyright 1985 Kathy Mar
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Bamboo Wind
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Kathy Mar |