In the calm, only one raindrop has fallen
Surges in spreading ripples
The bottom of the well

In the darkness stood a tree with seven branches. Its leaves trembled, mirror-bright, as a cold wind blew through the forest.

This freezing wind that rocks
The wind-tossed forest in my heart

The other trees stood huddled against the freezing shadows, branches drawn close to trunks as though to preserve what faint traces of warmth and light could reach them. But the tree with seven branches was like a piece of the shadows, and stood tall, strong against both the gloom and cold. It did not need the heat of summer to exist, and was the more beautiful for such a lack.

If we could have existed as one like that
Everyone would listen for the quiet voice in this wood
And shed tears over the sound

Around the tree’s roots lay a pool of glass-smooth water, like ebony in the lightless wood. Every now and then, a single mirror-bright leaf would drop from the tree and drift down to land in the glass-smooth pool. It would float there for a moment like a shard from a shattered looking glass, then be caught by the wind and whirl away into the darkness.

In this forest the clamor never ends
And with the silence

Like spring banishing the last traces of winter, the breeze slowly warmed, and all of the trees but the one with seven branches trembled in joy. The tree with seven branches did not tremble, though. It drew its branches in, as though to protect them from that warm breeze, and it keened. That beautiful tree, in the center of that beautiful pool, having stood against the dark and cold for so long, could not stand the coming of spring to the lightless wood. And so it keened, heartrending in the darkness. And one by one, its leaves broke off and fluttered away. They did not drift on the breeze, but were borne upon it, as the wind bears the lamentations of mourners at dusk. And one by one, the tree’s seven branches shattered into a thousand splinters of moon-white wood, raining down into the ebony waters with a sound like an immutable requiem.

Please bring back that peaceful time
To my wind-tossed heart

And in the lightless wood, spring had come.

Sound is born
We’re sinking in the sea of sound
Sound is born