Standing in a quiet garden, the speaker imagines that the wind carries voices from the past. A shifting breeze stirs bamboo poles and ruffles a pond full of carp, where fallen cherry petals float as if a girl had scattered them along with her songs. In that moment, "we" might hear the dead singing, their chansons trembling through a temple bell and rustling in the bamboo like hair.
What they sing about is human passion: how it shook, briefly, on the foam of time, cast its spells, and then split apart and echoed on in a "timeless well." The mood is gentle, wistful, and a little eerie. The speaker doesn't seem frightened by these ghosts. Instead, the poem suggests that intense feeling, though fleeting, never fully disappears. It lingers like sound in a deep well, and a patient listener, surrounded by wind, water, and petals, can still catch it.