Speaking and Language: Defense of Poetry

Not speaking and speaking are both human ways of being in the world, and there are kinds and grades of each. There is the dumb silence of slumber or apathy; the sober silence that goes with a solemn animal face; the fertile silence of awareness, pasturing the soul, whence emerge new thoughts; the alive silence of alert perception, ready to say, "This... this..."; the musical silence that accompanies absorbed activity; the silence of listening to another speak, catching the drift and helping him be clear; the noisy silence of resentment and self-recrimination, loud and subvocal speech but sullen to say it; baffled silence; the silence of peaceful accord with other persons or communion with the cosmos.

Paul Goodman on the anatomy of silence, 1973

Love Ascended Between Us

Love ascended between us
like the moon between two palm-trees
that have never embraced.

The intimate murmur of our two bodies
made the cooing the sea-swell brings,
but the hoarse voice was stifled,
the lips turned to stone.

The yearning to encircle moved our flesh
illuminated our inflamed bones,
but our arms' desire to reach out
died away in our arms.

Love and the moon passed between us
and devoured our lonely bodies.
And we are two ghosts who search
and find each other from afar.

Miguel Hernandez