Silence of Art

Silence of Art

Its not the wearing-down of someone else's sound,
not a space where one noise ends and your own more
useful sound begins. This sound is unlike the sound of
present desires. It is a settled and self-satisfied space
like one who has found a looked-for thing and knows

the silence of poems and faded tapestries.

Those who have suffered have this space.
Survivors of close-run things, who have fixed
at the rim of eyes the miraculous sign they alone
can see. The pleasure they feel is the secret
they conceal.

I know they have secrets who have spaces
for the treasure of silences.

No pleasant wind turned in me - but I saw
the retreating figure and the cleft foot;
stored up my pain in smiles. If it is pleasure
it is a wind in the god circling, turning
in his treasure of silences, to try in us
the only language he knows.

This silence is with us. Stored in the character of my song.
Stored in the gestures of time worn tapestries,
as in the secrets shared among the graceful
but silent pilgrims, now departing single-file

On mounts of gold and red.