The Sound of Silence

"The Sound of Silence"

The only lines I can remember to the
Simon and Garfunkle song
that never really leaves my mind.
Usually, humming it at inappropriate moments.


Like walking along Hennepin Avenue
during the first snowstorm of the year, watching
police cars line up outside the Basilica.
Pausing for a moment in the cold doorway
and watching a thousand officers
listen to steady silence of a funeral mass.
Discovering, for the first time, that the silence wasn't from
the funeral rites, but from the people themselves.


I realized then why my mother
didn't cry at her brother's graveside,
and hasn't cried at a funeral since.
Because the silence of a church, a snowstorm
a sick room, the garden the morning, blots out
everything else.


I'd like to be my mother
and never cry at a graveside, a birth, a favorite song.
Instead, to wait for the moment after the chatter and tears
and sit with the silence. When it alone
is deep enough, then the grief, the despair,
the unbridled joy, no longer matter.

At the moment you'd most like to speak,
pause an instant longer
and listen for the sound of it.

* * *

Well, there we are. My very first attempt in this endeavour. I think that this is easily one of the hardest poems I've ever written. Rather than wait around for the the pome to "come" to me, so to speak, I sat down and tried to pull together disperate experienes in to one coheisive whole. Eeep. This was difficult, and I find myself unable to revise much, because I don't like it in the first place. However, I wanted to begin with something difficult, and I certainly did. Note to self, if you want to have an easy first go at something, don't try to emulate something with which you are already totally in love. You won't live up to it.

So, was it successful? It was challenging, and a good way to start. I think that I have a better idea about how well this project is going to go than when I conceived it awhile ago. I'm glad I set the bar high in the beginning, even if I didn't quite achieve exactly what I wanted.

All right, so the poem for tomorrow: "Blue" by Ron Koertge. Why: Whenever I reccomend this poem to someone they are astounded that I like it. I love the fact that it turns piles and piles of preconceptions on their head and makes you reconsider something different. The last line is the strongest in the poem, and I want to work on having killer last lines. The Goal: take preconceptions I have and try to re-view them. Make the last line the strongest in the poem.

* * *

"Blue"
Ron Koertge
The director changes the sheets
himself, tucks in a fitted bottom,
turns back the top one, and sighs.

"This is a threesome," he says, "so
it's you over here, Suzanne. You down
there, Bob. And Meg, wherever, okay?"

It's pretty early, but we try hard.
Once it was cops and jail time. Now it's
Aids and all that stuff.

But if you're careful it pays the bills
and then some. It's almost never as
sick as the stuff you see on TV,

and every now and then it's really
lovely, one of those kindnesses
nobody understands.