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.