catastrophe

There is a silence that cannot speak.

There is a silence that will not speak. Beneath the grass the speaking dreams and beneath the
dreams is a sensate seat. The speech that frees comes forth from that amniotic deep. To attend
its voice, I can hear it say, is to embrace the absence. But I fail the task. The word is stone.

I admit it. I hate the stillness. I hate the stone. I hate the sealed vault with its cold icon. I hate
the staring into the night. The questions thinning into space. The sky swallowing the echoes.

Unless the stone bursts with telling, unless the seed flowers with speech, there is in my life no
living word. The sound I hear is only sound. White sound. Words, when they gall, are pock marks
on the earth. They are hailstones seeking an underground stream.

If I could follow the stream down and down to the hidden voice, would I come at last to the
freeing word? I ask the night sky but the silence is steadfast. There is no reply.


Joy Kogawa