File spoon-archives/phillitcrit.archive/phillitcrit_1998/phillitcrit.9802, message 114


Date: Thu, 12 Feb 1998 12:32:03 -0500
From: Eric Yost <103423.421-AT-CompuServe.COM>
Subject: PLC: A Poem About Silence


A friend wrote this and gave me permission to forward it to the list.  Any
feedback would be appreciated!
Eric

------------------------------------------------------------------------
To Tacita,
The Muse of Silence


Mute goddess, keep your peace.  Forgive me still.
I chatter senselessly believing all
I say measures precisely what I will.
Forgive as well this uttered ritual;
Its praise of you commences with your fall,
Confining you to prisons of the air:
To speech and dialogue, to song, to prayer.

Forgive our cities for expelling you
>From pecking orders of their great jack hammer,
Our dictionaries for forgetting you,
Or so defining both your grace and nature
The Furies curse us with a proper grammar.
Forgive, then grant your benediction: pause
Over the moment, celebrate your cause.

Let angry men listen and recognize
Your calm deliberation.  You put on
The look of thought in every thinker's eyes,
The wave's ideal in ocean or lagoon.
Of all forgotten dreams you are the moon
Lighting the seat of fools gone deaf and blind
>From baying like wolves at your tranquil mind.

Those carnivores trust a blood that stings their tongues,
Poisons the hidden wells of rhetoric,
Blots the scholar's notes and singer's lungs,
Strikes dumb the visions of a lunatic.
Each time time pulses from a heart, clocks tick,
But no one hears or understands the sense
Falling between, the pure intelligence.

Then intimate how meaning overflows
>From you, the possible, the latent spring.
Around your slumber symphonists compose
And disciples of meditation cling,
Till music hushes the crowd's bickering
And Buddha, though he hadn't slept for days,
Wakes up again with sunlight in his eyes.

                        
Come, teach us of your power to abide,
Instruct us only as the patient can,
So we learn patience for the changing tide,
Endurance for the weather's shifting plan,
Patience enough to love impatient man,
And nurture in the quiet light a voice,
That breaks the silence only to rejoice.
__________________________________

copyright 1994 Michael T. Young


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