Chinese Emperors Used to Have Poets for Advisors, Though Less And Less Understanding Why, Less and Less Then Knowing Of the Spirit’s Universal Sound

The flute, a dead wood piece,
can still return a sense
of grace with mere sound
as it did for Chang Yueh:

winter’s leafless woods,
disturbed and roused
by their blushing buds,
swayed alive

with the wand
of changing times
that cannot but follow
reasons and rhythms

of which mortals
barely or dimly know—
that’s how greater
and deeper

they are, those
cosmic decrees,
ever holding all,
even what we missed.