Saturday 9 July 2011

Hear What They Say

The words are held in a crevice of silence:
Echoing off these endless cliffs
Meeting their own reflection in half-way haunts;
Like two mirrors forever held
In the narcissism of their self-same images.

Perhaps the silence will speak up some day
Claim for its own this voice
Resonant with the cacophony it holds within
Like water frozen in those ancient stalactite
Awaiting the dawn of another time.

Mistake not this calm for melancholy,
No more of those common sorrows
Which every passing breeze brings to banal hearts,
You, who have refined words into silence,
Deserve an ode which words cannot sing.

A perfection you have taught to this unruliness
Time wrapped on a warp, spun in a weft
When Orpheus cannot err and glance behind
Nor may one escape into the fantasy of a future
Only to drink at this fountain of here and now,

Each gulp, a sweeter succulence.