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Saturday, September 6, 2014

Silence


SILENCE

I’ve begun to realize that you can listen to silence and learn from it. It has a quality and a dimension all its own.—Chaim Potok, The Chosen

Two o’clock in the morning.

How silent is the room…

Just before a motorcycle roars,
Chopping the air into jagged chips of din
Thrown round and round a flywheel,
Spiraling into the orifice of the outer ear,
Noisy swirling water inside a gurgling drain,
Bowling ball rolling heavily down wooden planks…

Then it fades...
Sawdust bursting in air,
Settling, a fine layer of manna,
Powdery film on the workshop floor.

You cannot hear anything again.

Silence is thick bread—
It lies on a plate and makes a crusty whisper
Only if perturbed by buttering.

Solid door of heavy beams tightly riveted by iron knobs,
Slammed shut and bolted,
Sealed even in its tiniest crevices,
Stands guard at the portal to the strange habitation of another world.

Originally published in Boston Poetry Magazine (September 4, 2014)



White 2 (2009) by Jeffrey Collins

4 comments:

  1. Images of works of art are posted on this website according to principles of fair use, specifically, they are posted for the purposes of information, education, and especially, contemplation.

    Gonzalinho

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  2. Under conditions of complete soundlessness, or practically so, we experience tinnitus or “ringing of the ears,” and for this reason the empirical experience of perfect silence does not really exist.

    Jeffrey Collins’ White 2 (2009), with its highly textured surface, is a more suitable metaphor for complete soundlessness than the color of just plain white.

    Gonzalinho

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  3. Silence is the door to another world.

    Gonzalinho

    ReplyDelete
  4. Silence is a quality of the soul. It is acquired and deepened through physical silence, but ultimately the source of genuinely satisfying silence is grace, the gift for which we are best disposed to receive through a dedicated life of prayer, in the most complete sense of the word.

    Gonzalinho

    ReplyDelete