Ghosts

When the wind shifts against these bamboo poles, or sifts the water in the carp-jeweled pond— the petals of the cherry fallen there as though a girl had strewn them with her songs— then we may hear the chansons of the dead, shuddering the bamboo temple’s bell, clamoring softly in the bamboo hair how human passion shuddered in a sieve upon the spume of time, cast spells, and cleaved and echoed in a timeless well.