Not every departure sounds a bell—
there's no such law!
Like the careful craft
of a blue dial, knowing time,
stays silent, still,
doesn't stir
even in melancholy moonlight!
So in departure I hear no bell.
Though roses bloom after the festival ends,
still, touching the six-story roof,
the moment compassion's water
dissolves into ghostly longitude,
I hear no bakul flower's rapture, nor
the cry of fire-quenching machines.
Yet hoping to hear that final bell
some fire-eaters sit waiting lifelong; and
mistaking the blue for boundless,
they watch only meteors fall
in the open sky
from birth onward.