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There is a silence where hath been no sound, There is a silence where no sound may be, In the cold grave—under the deep deep sea, Or in the wide desert where no life is found, Which hath been mute, and still must sleep profound; No voice is hush’d—no life treads silently, But clouds and cloudy shadows wander free, That never spoke, over the idle ground: But in green ruins, in the desolate walls Of antique palaces, where Man hath been, Though the dun fox, or wild hyena, calls, And owls, that flit continually between, Shriek to the echo, and the low winds moan, There the true Silence is, self-conscious and alone.

This is the silence around the poem of the death of my father. This is the silence before the poem. While my father was dying, the Challenger was exploding on TV Again and again. I watched it happen. In his hospital room, I followed his breath. Then it stopped. This is the silence in a poem about the dying of the father. We’re burning the earth. We’re burning the sky. Here is another silence in the middle of the poem about the immolation of the Fathers. The pyres of bodies in Saigon. The burned air The charred limbs. Ash. Rancid flames. Heat Light Fire We turn away. Here is another silence within the poem about the burial of the fire. When my father died, the rains poured down the moment I picked up the shovel of earth. I staggered under the weight of the water. Another silence please. I have always wanted to be a woman of fire. I will have to learn how to rain. Gently, I will learn how to rain. I have set fire to your green fields, May I be water to your burning lands. Please join me in this last silence at the end of the poem of fire.

She took the spareribs out of the oven and set them steaming on a plate before leaving her apartment. I didn't know how long to wait, tore into cold meat when I decided my mother wasn't coming back. * No one knew about the gun she kept in her purse until the authorities called—a .38 caliber pistol with a pearl handle and a trigger even she could easily pull— her car still waiting to be towed from a roadside ditch when they arrived on the scene. * Yesterday morning, I was leaning over a kitchen sink, my husband upstairs sleeping. Between his snores muffled under a down comforter and a portable electric heater that kept our bedroom warm, I knew I could sob as loud as I wanted without disturbing his dreams. * At the sports arena between musical acts and clouds of dope, I texted my lover a wide-angle shot of the stage— the reception bars on my phone bouncing back and forth between high and low—a text I had to send several times before it went through even though there was a chance his phone would be off or the text get lost for hours in the ether, even days. The silence is the agony. * My therapist says: It's not your fault. No way for you to have known exactly where your mother was headed. Then why am I left weeping in my kitchen decades after the fact? When I went upstairs and sat beside my husband, he could feel the mattress shift beneath our weight even though I felt much lighter after watching translucent ropes of snot lowering down into the sink, arms around me when I asked if he was awake, knowing that he wasn't. * How many romances get derailed when a text that has been sent fails to go through? How many mothers disappear through a kitchen door never to return—the food on the table the last meal they will ever serve? * My lover texted back: where are you now? Having no idea what I'd been going through when he texted again: Wish I was there with you.

When I come to view about steadfastness Espousal is as ever Evil never unravels Memory was and will be yet mercy flows Mercies to me and mine Night rainy my family in private and family I know I know short conviction have losses then let me see why To what distance and by what path I thought you would come away _____________ 1 Battered out of Isaiah Prophets stand gazing Formed from earth In sure and certain What can be thought Who go down to hell alive is the theme of this work I walk its broad shield Every sign by itself havoc brood from afar Letting the slip out Glorious in faithfulness Reason never thought saw 2 You already have brine Reason swept all away Disciples are fishermen Go to them for direction Gospel of law Gospel of shadow in the vale of behavior who is the transgressor Far thought for thought nearer one to the other I know and do not know Non attachment dwell on nothing Peace be in this house Only his name and truth 3 Having a great way to go it struck at my life how you conformed to dust I have taken the library Volumes might be written ambiguous signs by name Near nightfall it touches it Nothing can forbear it So fierce and so flaring Sometimes by the seaside all echoes link as air Not I cannot tell what so wanton and so all about 4 Fields have vanished The Mower his hopes Bow broke time loose none but my shadow she to have lived on with the wood-siege nesting in this poem Departed from the body at home of the story I'm free and I'm famished And so to the Irish Patrol sentinel ensign Please feel my arms open 5 The issue of legitimation Identity of the subject Circumcision of a heart driven outside its secret Elysian solitary imagination by doubt but not by sight Fear that forever forever perfect Charity casts out The Canticle is an allegory unchangeable but changeable Fluttering robes of Covetous He is incomprehensible he makes darkness his covert 6 Ages pre-supposed ages the darkness of life out of necessity night being a defense by day the cause and way to it From same to the same These joining together and having allegiance Words are an illusion are vibrations of air Fabricating senselessness He has shattered gates thrown open to himself 7 Though lost I love Love unburied lies No echo newlyfledge Thought but thought the moving cause the execution of it Only for theft's sake even though even perturb the peace But for the hate of it questionless limit unassuaged newlyfledge A counter-Covenant 8 Mysterious as night itself All negligently scenery if Nothing could be seen Sacraments are mysterious Ambiguous in literal meaning the Pentateuch the Angels John all men form a silent man who wrote the author down Sackcloth itself is humility a word prerogatives array Language a wood for thought over the pantomime of thought Words words night unto night 9 Drift of human mortality what is the drift of words Pure thoughts are coupled Turn your face to what told me love grazed here at least mutinous predominant unapparent What is unseen is eternal Judgments are a great deep Confession comes to nought half to be taken half left From communion of wrongdoing doubleness among the nouns I feed and feed upon names 10 Claim foreign order dismantling mortal Begotten possibility plummet fetter seem So coldly systems break Fraught atvantaging Two tell againstself Theme theme heart fury all in mutiny Troubleless or sadder Estranged of all strange Let my soul quell Give my soul ease 11 Antic prelate treason I put on haircloth Clear unutterable Secret but tell What diadem bright Theme theme heart fury Winged knowledge hush Billeted near presage such themes do quell Claim foreign order Plummet fetter seem wild as loveDeath Two tell against self 12 Strange fear of sleep am bafflement gone Bat winged dim dawn herthe midmost wide I did this and I But forever you say Bafflement nether elegy herthe otherwise I Irreconcilable theme keep silent then Strange always strange Estrange that I desire Keep cover come cover 13 Lies are stirring storms I listen spheres from far Whereunder shoreward away you walked here Protector unassuaged asunder thought you walked here Overshadow I listen spheres of stars I draw you close ever so Communion come down and down Quiet place to stop here Who knows ever no one knows to know unlove no forgive _____________ Half thought thought otherwise loveless and sleepless the sea Where you are where I would be half thought thought otherwise Loveless and sleepless the sea

Sybaritic afterlife I don’t crave you. I like daylight. I like crowds. I don’t think it will be charming underground. The silence will be sudden then last. What’s chic will shrink. There won’t be any pretty, pity. Will never peaches there, or air. We’ll be so squashed and sour there. I don’t want a cold place. Don’t want a threadbare clamp and consequence all old. Our loneliness will be prolonged then go too far. Oh fuck it’s true. Then nothing left of you.

Good morning, electorate. We are on good speaking terms but do not speak, which means we must be self-reliant, there are many matters at hand. We’re not close enough to know each other’s good news, bad news, private matters. There are silent streets off public gardens for intimacy and come-what-mays. There is library silence and deadly silence that is a private matter. There is happiness written in white and silent writings, meters overheard. Silent are the voices I no longer hear — after the first word spoken I’d recognize who’s there. There is a playwright’s staging called “business,” silent instructions without dialogue, and the silence that says, “none of your business,” but I have an office, a religion, that holds me responsible for everything. I hardly lift a finger to stop the slaughtering. It’s a little like putting a nickel or a dime in a cup and writing this against death, raking leaves against the changing seasons. My memory is like the first sound picture, The Jazz Singer. I am screening: it must have been October, 1927, I remember skipping along Liberty Avenue, before I learned to dance, I sang, “Hoover in the ashcan, Smith in the White House.” Later in Catalonia I danced the Sardana — with its opening and closing circles that made free and equal the young and old, while the soulful tenora, a revolutionary woodwind, played the dance forbidden by Generalissimo Franco. Further back again toward first silences — alone in the Charleville of my den, I smoked Rimbaud’s clay pipe, I thought “I will never die.” I’m simply telling the impossible truth that made my later studies more difficult. When I first shaved my fake oxtail beard invented by Cervantes, I fought back day-reasoning without understanding such dreams were my squire. I returned with Sancho to Granada, my forefathers’ home, my forbearers’ caves, banderillas in the bull’s neck of my mind. When I was young and difficult, Lorca’s photo near my bed, I saw Twelfth Night, sang Mozart arias, read history textbooks my father wrote. Loyalist, I shot fascists, not Iroquois. I found an old photo of Belmonte, the matador born with deformed legs — he stood so close to the bull the beast had to charge around him. His sword in a cape of silence, he stood erect, motionless, a gypsy in a suit of lights tailored by Goya. Interval....Intermission.... I visited a zoo of languages on the soon-to-be-sunk Statendam, in February touring the Mediterranean with my parents, from the pillars of Hercules to the Bosphorus. In Barcelona, I sided with the brave bull who entered the ring deceived, never having seen a man off a horse, the bull, however noble, sure of death. • I want my work to have the “taste of self”: In the bright, silent mornings of my soul, I refuse my royalties: a bull’s ears, tail, and severed foot. God does not ride a horse, Jesus preferred donkeys. I feed my donkeys carrots, play them operas. A trio, they bray with joy. Because it’s common sense I make noise for the Lord. He wants our kind to read, sing, speak to each other, to rejoice and play to beat the band, horns, drums, bawdy noisemakers. We should give Him the time of day, among sounds, unhearable, bang away, weep with the uncountable suffering others. Among the multitudes, in the swarms, the schools, the hives, rejoice, boo, snore, make noise for the love of noise and questioning, praise Him on Doomsday, He hears the noise of all the world’s blinking eyes. I believe to live as a silent flower is worthwhile. I cannot speak the languages of trees better than birds, who out of gratitude and affection learn arboreal grammar, accents, pronunciation, whatever the weather, but I try because I love a good oak — still, I cannot better the birds    ... “Affection” for my neighbor is easy, “love” difficult. Silence can be affection, silence a perfect herald. Still there is speechless love and silent conversations called gestures, helping hands, sometimes only a loving telephone call. There are equators, latitudes, and longitudes of silence, useful compasses, lighthouses, red and green buoys, red light to port, green starboard, silent foghorns. I remember silent remembrances. Is partial light the opposite of silence? The sun is noisy, gossips earthly languages. Shhh. Trying to find truth. I’ve heard late-night laughter in Roman streets, screeching pigs carried upside down to slaughter. From time to time the living whisper, scream, “Help me! Murder!” Roots tremble. I never heard the noise and silence of mass murder. In Asia and Africa, there are English wildfires. Greek and Latin are still smoldering, flaming African syllables on every tongue. Love, silence, reflection, and revelation in the jungle and pine-barren ashes. I lift my head to music I call gods, whole notes, scales, clefs, and rests that are saints, mullahs, rabbis, atheists, pagans. So I will ask to collect my dead and wounded and you will never hear from me, the unheralded herald, anymore.

Doors opened and shut, the director shouted orders through a bullhorn, or babbled just out of the frame. A carpenter hammered flats nearby for the next production. All of this, and more, while the actors blocked it out, already living in that small square of light where silence reigned like a tiny theatre for the deaf. Now, almost a century later, it's peaceful, far from the center of action, the last voice on the street reduced to a whisper, then gone. Not even birdsong as evening's opening credits begin to roll. Only the film, shimmering out of a disc thinner than sound, characters moving like fish in their gray element— less than fish— not a hiss, not a bubble, not even a cry from that dim world of silence doubled by time.

Come, the wind may never again Blow as now it blows for us; And the stars may never again shine as now they shine; Long before October returns, Seas of blood will have parted us; And you must crush the love in your heart, and I the love in mine!

My wife wears headphones as she plays Chopin etudes in the winter light. Singing random notes, she sways in and out of shadow while night settles. The keys she presses make a soft clack, the bench creaks when her weight shifts, golden cotton fabric ripples across her shoulders, and the sustain pedal clicks. This is the hidden melody I know so well, her body finding harmony in the give and take of motion, her lyric grace of gesture measured against a slow fall of darkness. Now stillness descends to signal the end of her silent music.

It’s the last day, but I’m keeping the news to myself. If yesterday it made sense for letter carriers To carry letters from door to door, The job still ought to be worth doing. Why tell what I know and risk a walkout? Let firefighters race to the last fire. Let platoons of police set up their last lines So the factions that come to the demonstration Do battle only in words and gestures. The day is different, but only for me, Knowing as I do that it offers the last chance For a cautious investor to resist his nature enough To back a grocery in a battered district, And the last chance for the would-be grocers To open a bottle of good champagne In the kitchen of the friend who’s led them Through the small-print maze of the application. And now they’re toasting the months to come Scheduled to move the project along From drawing blueprints to cutting ribbons. Shall I tell them their expectations are dreams If the dreams impart to the day contour and substance? Though silent, I’m rooting for them to let the day Expand to include the days to be denied them. And I hope that the friend who’s pouring A final round in his kitchen isn’t disturbed As his small apartment fills with the sound Of squeaking from across the hall, though yesterday He banged on his neighbor's door for quiet. It’s his last chance to endorse a woman Bent on learning from scratch to play the viola, To respect her for finding an hour a day for practice, As if raising two sons alone And teaching civics at a high school Not renowned for civility weren't enough. Should I sit on a stone and lament That the day is her last if it still contains, Scrolled up within it, the years she'll need To master the art of voicing feelings Not now expressed, at home or in class, About the distance between the world She’d like to inhabit and the world she does? Some other prophet, convinced the future Depends on the flow of time to give it substance, May decide to speak out. I’m keeping silent As one of her sons sits at his desk Dividing a page into reasons for leaving home And reasons for staying. Now on this last day It seems that home is best defined as any region On earth that has much to teach him, And now as the region fit to receive the most Of whatever he’ll have to offer After he learns where his talents lie.