“Half my friends are dead.
I will make you new ones, said earth.
No, give them back, as they were, instead,
with faults and all, I cried”
excerpted from “Sea Canes” by Derek Walcott
Stone Silence
Sometimes words fail me.
it is not the silence of meditation, where I except myself from making sense
it is not the silence of meditation, where I except myself from making sense
or naming
the restlessness of leaves
or the turning tires on pavement,
cars plummeting their captives from one nonplace to another
drip, drip, drip of neighbors untended eaves.
I am absent in that silence and will return from it
like mornings and spring
warm again and green.
Sometimes words fail me
Cold and hard painful presence of me again, and then
most maddening
Still me.
This silence has no womblike darkness that promises dawns light
but is an endless twilight silence
perched alone on the edge of night.
CC