I am in a vast black sea, the spaces reach in front of me
As far as I could ever see, as far again behind.
And each new world I land upon, with seas and hills and storm and
dawn,

Can never fill me when I'm gone or overwhelm my mind.

But I am haunted by a bamboo wind
The clatter of the bones of our misbegotten earth
The wail of a memory of how our fears
Destroyed the precious cradle of our birth.

Bamboo glades within my head are spectres of the lands we fled
With all our second chances dead we could not hope to stay
Bamboo dances in my night, hides the stars that watch my flight
It moans and rattles of the blight that made us run away.

But I am haunted by a bamboo wind
The clatter of the bones of our misbegotten earth
The wail of a memory of how our fears
Destroyed the precious cradle of our birth.

Bamboo forest, dead or lost, overlaps these points of frost
Knowing what these stars have cost I feel a bleak despair
Ancestors revile our name, curse the wombs from which we came
Dispossessed and drowned in shame, with no home anywhere.

(twice)
And I am haunted by a bamboo wind
The clatter and the moaning of a world we see no more
The rustle of the ghost of leaves in dappled sun
The ruined song of every shattered shore.


Words and music: Kathy Mar

Copyright 1985 Kathy Mar