Silences

I wonder what the other poets think of

when they are not looking

out of their poets’ windows,

 

and contemplating the next word,

the next line,

the next stanza,

and the eternal problem

 

faced by each poet,

in each poem:

how to end the blasted thing.

 

Maybe, like me,

they are meditating on

the multiplicity of silences

which life presents to us,

 

and whether or not

they all sound the same.

 

Perhaps it’s a deep silence

which they imagine,

like the silence of the tomb;

or maybe a melancholy silence,

like the one hidden in the word goodbye.

 

It could be, given that they’re poets,

the silences of the unwritten word, the unwritten line,

the unwritten poem.

Or even the silence of those whole poems

which failed to emerge

into this unquiet place.

 

While they are thinking of their many silences,

you fix yourself upon the silence of this page,

with its borders of

wordless, blank, unwritten silence,

 

isolated from the world of noise

outside of this poet’s window.