The Voice That Silences

The Voice That Silences

The voice that silences
begins as an
interruption.
This interruption
occurred so long ago
on a playground inhabited
by ragged dolls and menacing giants,
by pennies and the petals
pulled from daisies, or perhaps,
at a dinner table ruled by the Father God,
that rupture began to seem
the natural fabric of the world:
a habit of life for which you
made a place in your own wardrobe,
and for which, being clever, you found precedent
in the conversations of immortals
or in the budding of a leaf:
a transcendental rapture
clothed in virtue.

At a place not so far away—
in the valley beyond a high mountain pass,
or in the murmurings you occasionally hear
from those inside, sitting around a small fire
passing a pipe of tobacco, a blanket
woven by the grandmother of your grandmother
lies folded on the ground—
not excessively distinguished, not,
perhaps, embroidered with lions or eagles,
but bearing your patient name.

23 April