from The Women At Point Sur
XII
Here were new idols again to praise him;
I made them alive; but when they looked up at the face before
they had seen it they were drunken and fell down.
I have seen and not fallen, I am stronger than the idols,
But my tongue is stone how could I speak him? My blood in my
veins is seawater how could it catch fire?
The rock shining dark rays and the rounded
Crystal the ocean his beam of blackness and silence
Edged with azure, bordered with voices;
The moon her brittle tranquillity; the great phantoms, the foun-
tains of light, the seed of the sky,
Their plaintive splendors whistling to each other:
There is nothing but shines though it shine darkness; nothing but
answers; they are caught in the net of their voices
Though the voices be silence; they are woven in the nerve-warp.
One people, the stars and the people, one structure; the voids
between stars, the voids between atoms, and the vacancy
In the atom in the rings of the spinning demons,
Are full of that weaving; one emptiness, one presence: who had
watched all his splendor
Had known but a little: all his night, but a little.
I made glass puppets to speak of him, they splintered in my hand
and have cut me, they are heavy with my blood.
But the jewel-eyed herons have never beheld him
Nor heard; nor the tall owl with cat's ears, the bittern in the
willows, the squid in the rock in the silence of the ocean,
The vulture that broods in the pitch of the blue
And sees the earth globed, her edges dripping into rainbow twi-
lights: eyed hungers, blind fragments: I sometime
Shall fashion images great enough to face him
A moment and speak while they die. These here have gone mad:
but stammer the tragedy you crackled vessels.
poem by Robinson Jeffers
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Related quotes
Populist
I dreamed myself of their people, I am of their people,
I thought they watched me that I watched them
that they
watched the sun and the clouds for the cities
are no longer mine image images
of existence (or song
of myself?) and the roads for the light
in the rear-view mirror is not
death but the light
of other lives tho if I stumble on a rock I speak
of rock if I am to say anything anything
if I am to tell of myself splendor
of the roads secrecy
of paths for a word like a glass
sphere encloses
the word opening
and opening
myself and I am sick
for a moment
with fear let the magic
infants speak we who have brought steel
and stone again
and again
into the cities in that word blind
word must speak
and speak the magic
infants’ speech driving
northward the populist
north slowly in the sunrise the lapping
of shallow
waters tongues
of the inlets glisten
like fur in the low tides all that
childhood envied the sounds
of the ocean
over the flatlands poems piers foolhardy
structures and the lives the ingenious
lives the winds
squall from the grazing
ranches’ wandering
fences young workmen’s
loneliness on the structures has touched
and touched the heavy tools tools
in our hands in the clamorous
country birth-
light savage
light of the landscape magic
page the magic
infants speak
poem by George Oppen
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Never Ending
I try to speak but I can only hear silence...
I say no words for that is how I feel... nothing
Only my thoughts can speak but only I can hear their low whispers...
They surround me at night speaking of you...
I try to shut them out...
but those never ending voices only speak louder...
Tormenting my heart until they get what they want...
I lay there and cry myself to sleep only to dream of your face...
Never ending thoughts;
Never ending voices;
Never ending dreams...
poem by Adela Myers
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Silence In Battle
Shapeless shadows, in silence listening,
Deepest feelings in restraint,
A silent voice calls in mournful feeling,
We move in silence, voices faint.
Harmful silence touches the soul,
A larger loneliness laid untold,
So speak only when you must,
Infinite dread, a knife's deep thrust.
Darkness and silence lay so long,
Self control from dusk to dawn.
Awful darkness and silence reign,
Over the lifeless, barren, Iraqi plain.
Crouching down when nothing stirs,
Mysterious night, we temper her.
Rocklike hardness in our mind,
Tryant silence steals our time.
No echo sounding when I speak,
Body trembles, silence deep.
We shall remain thousands of miles away,
Uneasy silence, dreadful day.
poem by Philip Lore
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Em 3
about you
what shall i say about you?
ah, i prefer my
silence
this is my cure about
you
yes, my silence
it shall speak about
you my silence
my very own silence
to speak about your
long silence
now we are at peace
in our silence
both shall speak about
us yes our silence
our marital silence in
the silence of our bed
the root of all our
troubles freud say is in
the silence of our beds
two beds now
four meters apart
speaking in silence
the silence of the house
and the chairs
and the staircases
and the carpets and
the ticks and the
empty glasses or those
cold coffee and
frozen butter.
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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From The Heights Of Maccho Picchu
Rise up to be born with me, brother.
Give me your hand from the deep
Zone seeded by your sorrow.
You won’t return from under the rocks.
You won’t return from your subterranean time.
Your hardened voice won’t return.
Your gouged-out eyes won’t return.
Look at me from the depth of the earth,
laborer, weaver, silent shepherd:
tamer of wild llamas like spirit images:
construction worker on a daring scaffold:
waterer of the tears of the Andes:
jeweler with broken fingers:
farmer trembling as you sow:
potter, poured out into your clay:
bring to the cup of this new life
your old buried sorrows.
Show me your blood and your furrow,
Tell me, “Here I was punished,
Because the jewel didn’t shine or the earth
Didn’t yield grain or stones on time.”
Show me the stone you fell over
And the wood on which they crucified you,
Make a spark from the old flints for me,
For the old lamps to show the whips still stuck
After centuries in the old wounds
And the axes shining with blood.
I come to speak for your dead mouth.
Across the earth come together all
The silent worn-out lips
And from the depth speak to me all this long night
Like I was pinned down there with you.
Tell me all, chain by chain,
Link by link and step by step,
Sharpen the knives which you hid,
Put them in my breast and in my hand,
Like a river of yellow lighting
Like a river of buried jaguars
And let me weep, hours, days, years,
For blind ages, cycles of stars.
Give me silence, water, hope.
Give me struggle, iron, volcanoes.
Stick bodies to me like magnets.
Draw near to my veins and my mouth.
Speak through my words and my blood.
poem by Pablo Neruda
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Night
The ebb slips from the rock, the sunken
Tide-rocks lift streaming shoulders
Out of the slack, the slow west
Sombering its torch; a ship's light
Shows faintly, far out,
Over the weight of the prone ocean
On the low cloud.
Over the dark mountain, over the dark pinewood,
Down the long dark valley along the shrunken river,
Returns the splendor without rays, the shining of shadow,
Peace-bringer, the matrix of all shining and quieter of shining.
Where the shore widens on the bay she opens dark wings
And the ocean accepts her glory. O soul worshipful of her
You like the ocean have grave depths where she dwells always,
And the film of waves above that takes the sun takes also
Her, with more love. The sun-lovers have a blond favorite,
A father of lights and noises, wars, weeping and laughter,
Hot labor, lust and delight and the other blemishes. Quietness
Flows from her deeper fountain; and he will die; and she is
immortal.
Far off from here the slender
Flocks of the mountain forest
Move among stems like towers
Of the old redwoods to the stream,
No twig crackling; dip shy
Wild muzzles into the mountain water
Among the dark ferns.
O passionately at peace you being secure will pardon
The blasphemies of glowworms, the lamp in my tower, the
fretfulness
Of cities, the cressets of the planets, the pride of the stars.
This August night in a rift of cloud Antares reddens,
The great one, the ancient torch, a lord among lost children,
The earth's orbit doubled would not girdle his greatness, one fire
Globed, out of grasp of the mind enormous; but to you O Night
What? Not a spark? What flicker of a spark in the faint far
glimmer
Of a lost fire dying in the desert, dim coals of a sand-pit the
Bedouins
Wandered from at dawn . . . Ah singing prayer to what gulfs
tempted
Suddenly are you more lost? To us the near-hand mountain
Be a measure of height, the tide-worn cliff at the sea-gate a
measure of continuance.
The tide, moving the night's
Vastness with lonely voices,
Turns, the deep dark-shining
Pacific leans on the land,
Feeling his cold strength
To the outmost margins: you Night will resume
The stars in your time.
O passionately at peace when will that tide draw shoreward?
Truly the spouting fountains of light, Antares, Arcturus,
Tire of their flow, they sing one song but they think silence.
The striding winter giant Orion shines, and dreams darkness.
And life, the flicker of men and moths and the wolf on the hill,
Though furious for continuance, passionately feeding, passionately
Remaking itself upon its mates, remembers deep inward
The calm mother, the quietness of the womb and the egg,
The primal and the latter silences: dear Night it is memory
Prophesies, prophecy that remembers, the charm of the dark.
And I and my people, we are willing to love the four-score years
Heartily; but as a sailor loves the sea, when the helm is for harbor.
Have men's minds changed,
Or the rock hidden in the deep of the waters of the soul
Broken the surface? A few centuries
Gone by, was none dared not to people
The darkness beyond the stars with harps and habitations.
But now, dear is the truth. Life is grown sweeter and lonelier,
And death is no evil.
poem by Robinson Jeffers
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Psalm 115
The true God our refuge; or, Idolatry reproved.
Not to ourselves, who are but dust,
Not to ourselves is glory due,
Eternal God, thou only just,
Thou only gracious, wise, and true.
Shine forth in all thy dreadful name;
Why should a heathen's haughty tongue
Insult us, and, to raise our shame,
Say, "Where's the God you've served so long?"
The God we serve maintains his throne
Above the clouds, beyond the skies;
Through all the earth his will is done;
He knows our groans, he hears our cries.
But the vain idols they adore
Are senseless shapes of stone and wood;
At best a mass of glitt'ring ore,
A silver saint or golden god.
[With eyes and ears they carve their head;
Deaf are their ears, their eyes are blind;
In vain are costly off'rings made,
And vows are scattered in the wind.
Their feet were never made to move,
Nor hands to save when mortals pray;
Mortals that pay them fear or love
Seem to be blind and deaf as they.]
O Isr'el! make the Lord thy hope,
Thy help, thy refuge, and thy rest;
The Lord shall build thy ruins up,
And bless the people and the priest.
The dead no more can speak thy praise,
They dwell in silence and the grave;
But we shall live to sing thy grace,
And tell the world thy power to save.
poem by Isaac Watts
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My Beauty External
I stand in front of the mirror.
I turn on the light, so my reflection I can see.
But things are not as they appear.
I do not like what I see.
I just want to be beautiful.
The lights are dimmed, to minimize the outward appearance.
I try to appease an outside world,
I want them to see the beautiful me.
Why is it they speak of a beauty that I do not find so apparent?
Why is it I see the same beauty in another that stares in disappointment at their reflection?
Their lights too are dimmed.
But it is not the outward light that shows beauty.
It is my inward light.
If my inward light is dimmed.
Then it is my inner beauty that lurks in the darkness of my own mind.
A battle that has raged since before the dawn of time.
I shut off the light,
I cannot shut off the voices in my mind.
Many voices screaming, drowning out the one that whispers.
They tell me I am not good enough.
If I clear my mind, and silence the voices,
I hear the one whisper into my heart.
"You are beautiful".
For now, it is my inward light that shines.
It reflects my beauty for the world to see.
But it is only when that light shines within me.
That my beauty of the external can be seen.
poem by Ryan Lee Morris
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In Silence
We talk in silence
We speak in exchanging breath
We argue in silence
We battle with our stare
We think in silence
We travel in our mind
We promise in silence
We create the secret better
We sing in silence
We smile in radiant melody
We enjoy in silence
We move with our body
We share in silence
We stay in each other arms
We love in silence
We grow the hope of warmth
We hate in silence
We shake in every fiber being
We pray in silence
We enchant the words in heart
We long in silence
We drown in loneliness
We break in silence
We flow soundless tears
We walk in silence
We tell our story in footprint
We listen in silence
We could hear numerous voices
poem by Maria Sudibyo
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Being Left Out
we arrive here together
when the moon was full
for what reason i am left out
i am alone
and you who are all my friends
like sparrows
flew away from me
together
i am like a tree without leaves
and the rocks from the cliff
stare at me in silence
the rivers have their tryst with the sea
the clouds in reunion with the wind
all in their ecstasies
bursting
the fire of sunset amazes me
i want to go near and be burned
there is something lovely
in that red and orange blaze
soon the black bird comes and hovers
on the land that i walk
soon the silence of the stars shall shoo away
the madness of my heart
i may cry and be like the rain and flood all
the paths that you have left me
i may topple some bridges and witness
the fading colors of the rainbow
the dissolving mist of the mountains
these are the utilities of futility
someone has cried and no one listens
i have a dream for many nights now
i have become the moon owning my own light
i speak to my heart and my ears listen
i shine my own light and i am now silent with a hundred stars
you all left me and now i must thrive
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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Silence Is Not Enough
SILENCE IS NOT ENOUGH
Silence is not enough
The human needs words and sentences
Speech and meaning
Silence and waiting in silence
And loving silence so much
Are not enough
Even the longest silence is not enough
We need to speak to another person
We need human hearing
Living in the silence of our own lost selves is not enough
We need to be heard and be listened to
And to speak in a world where there are listeners
Who know how to reply.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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The Implausible
The Silence Rings so load
Only the Deaf Could Listen
A sweet voice from the dumb
Wow! The Cripples dancing in Steps
The blind filming the show
Still, The Noise can't defeat the Silence
Melody in the Noise not concede
Only the Deaf could enjoy it
Cripples hunting Great Aromas of the Silence
Blind can't cope with darkness
And the silence was touched,
No one could bear the Disaster
Smiles on the face of the Noise
The Dumb Singing of help
The blind ready to correct the mistakes
On the top of all, the Noise Stand,
So hard to dance but no option
Tears on the face of the deaf
Sympathizing the agony of silence.
From the sofa, The blind watched
poem by Abayomi Okemakinde
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The Echoes of Silence
In restless dreams I walked alone
narrow streets of cobble stone,
'Neath tha halo of a street lamp
I turned my collar to the cold and damp,
When my eyes stabbed by the flash of neon light
that split the night and touched
The Echoes of Silence.
And in the naked light I saw
ten thousand people maybe more
People talking without speaking,
people hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never share
and no one dares to disturb
The Echoes of Silence.
'Fools! ' said I, 'You do not know
silence like a cancer grows
'Hear my words that I might teach you
take my arm that I might reach you.'
But my words like silent raindrops fell
and echoed in the wells of silence,
And people bowed and prayed
to the neon gods they made
And the signs flash out its warning
in the words that it was forming
And the signs said, 'The words of the prophets
are written on the subway walls
and the tenement halls' and whispered...
The Echoes of Silence.
poem by InNer WhisPers
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Silence Is...
Silence is an absence
Silence is profound
Silence is a conversation
Being had without sound
Silence is an expression
One that cannot be heard
Silence cannot be spoken
Although it is a word
Silence is a presence
Of great nothingness
Silence can be something
And yet cease to exist
Silence can fill a room
And have no mass at all
Silence cannot be dropped, yet it can fall
Silence is a mystery
That will forever go unsolved
Silence is how every sound can swiftly be dissolved
Silence is the sound of rest
The only sound that can sound best
While other sounds can cause great pain
Silence is not the sound to blame
For Silence is what silence is
Something that is nothing
Nothing that exists
poem by Kyle.J Carruthers
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Rainbow Sky
Tonight, I saw a radiant rainbow sky:
Stunning colours, which caught my eye.
Shades of blue, yellow, peach, and red:
Absolutely amazing, it has to be said!
It wasn't very long after the sun had set:
It was an evening sky, which I won't forget.
It was Nature's show, at the close of day,
And I had trouble tearing my eyes away.
I wonder how all those colours appear,
And how they look so bright and clear?
The horizon never looked quite so pretty:
That darkness fell, really was a great pity.
Once darkness fell, there no colours left.
Losing the rainbow sky, I felt quite bereft.
I saw the sky ablaze with colours of fire;
Of seeing such sights, I doubt I'll ever tire.
Away from the horizon, but not too far,
Were a crescent moon, and twinkling star.
This patch of sky had a much darker hue:
I guess some may call it ‘midnight blue.'
In the night sky, the moon and stars shone:
Brighter still, once the daylight had gone.
Tired out, I snuggled down in my cosy bed,
With moon and stars shining over my head.
poem by Angela Wybrow
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The Illuminated Stone
Once there was a rock
holding onto a Blackened sky
'Twas one night when
moon said to Rock
Let me light you...
'No' said rock
'this can not
for I am but a stone,
that was thrown
and landed in the sky.'
'It frightens me here Moon
for see' said Rock 'I cannot fly'
'A Stone? ' laughed Moon 'You need not fly
for you rock, you are a star'
'NO said Rock
this I'm not
I'm ordinary by far'
Moon shone bright
and shed his light
on Rock
and in no time it appeared
that rock might just be
the star Moon predicted,
so here was Rock
still in shock
for everyone started to stare.
'Moon stop that light'
asked Rock
'for you don't understand
I really am just a stone
and a ugly stone I am'
Rock knew of all the
sharp edges and holes and shreds,
caused by much erosion,
for stones are not pebbles
small and smooth,
that lays in soft riverbeds.
Moon grew fond
of Rock
and spent night after night
talking to Rock,
all the time shining his light.
Rock looked past Luna's flame
and found there something plain
this made Rock feel safe with Luna
and started feeling lighter night by night
and as time passed by
Rock and Luna became one
outshining even Sun.
Moon as all man knows
is a bright shining fellow
full of Romance for lovers
and a light for a traveler's road...
he even turns the tides,
but a little known fact,
is that Luna is the cause,
of mental Lunacy.
If this you doubt,
just walk on a full moon's eve,
into a Looney house,
for there you'll perceive
just what happens,
to many who have
one to many times to much,
by Luna's light been touched.
Ask even the howling wolf
who warns, on full moon nights
his fellow wolverine canine,
not to much at full moon stare.
One day perchance,
Rock found this little factling out
and realised how so many, many
laughed at Rocks illuminated faults,
so Rock tried with all Rocks might
to get out of Luna's pure light,
but everywhere that Rock tried to go,
Luna would send his burning flame
illuminating more and more
of Rock's stone of shame.
Rock tried for the longest time
to get away from the Luna once so dear,
but one day Rock began to fear
that Luna will never stop
and that day by day,
Luna's light was not just
illuminating mistakes,
but eroding even more
ugliness into the already unsightly Rock.
One day after much wiggling and fight
Rock came loose from
the blackened sky
and down to earth
Rock tumbled
Rock back to earth did fly,
a hump of burnt out
starlight stone,
and came to rest within
a selfmade crater.
Rock cried and cried
for Moon she missed
but knew that Moon's light
was deluding, not just everyone else
arround it, but most all
the Lunatic man
living on the moon.
poem by Michelle Melody
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As A Witness
I find it really strange
That those who speak of God
Have had no evident range
Of His Being, and that's sad.
Like a blind man describing
What light is, and how
Bright and illuminating
It is to see...and to know.
But without knowledge of Him
Some speak in deep darkness
Delineating things at whim
Exposing vain emptiness!
For how can one speak
Of a God he never met?
Never encounter, never seek,
Yet presumptions there are set?
For valid statements lay
On the rock of experience
As a witness I can truly say
I've come to know God's Presence.
poem by Cynthia Buhain-Baello
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Norwegian Poem
Norwegian Poem
Stormy night lesser stars were torn off
their heavenly anchorage and splashed
into the ocean, spindrift, ships ran on to
reefs and in the Ragnarock human voices
went unheard and sailor died in silence.
Black sky stars retreated into the safety
of the galaxy, the moon and sun too and
the winter night is endless, and a hush
fell on an earth that looked like a snowball
on a slag heap till spring came and sheep
fearlessly grazed on steep hills fazing
western seas on grass fertilized by futile
cries from bodies slashed to fodder for crabs
that grew big that year.
Ragnarock. “Doomsday”
poem by Oskar Hansen
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Silence
I have known the silence of the stars and of the sea,
And the silence of the city when it pauses,
And the silence of a man and a maid,
And the silence of the sick
When their eyes roam about the room.
And I ask: For the depths,
Of what use is language?
A beast of the field moans a few times
When death takes its young.
And we are voiceless in the presence of realities --
We cannot speak.
A curious boy asks an old soldier
Sitting in front of the grocery store,
"How did you lose your leg?"
And the old soldier is struck with silence,
Or his mind flies away
Because he cannot concentrate it on Gettysburg.
It comes back jocosely
And he says, "A bear bit it off."
And the boy wonders, while the old soldier
Dumbly, feebly lives over
The flashes of guns, the thunder of cannon,
The shrieks of the slain,
And himself lying on the ground,
And the hospital surgeons, the knives,
And the long days in bed.
But if he could describe it all
He would be an artist.
But if he were an artist there would be deeper wounds
Which he could not describe.
There is the silence of a great hatred,
And the silence of a great love,
And the silence of an embittered friendship.
There is the silence of a spiritual crisis,
Through which your soul, exquisitely tortured,
Comes with visions not to be uttered
Into a realm of higher life.
There is the silence of defeat.
There is the silence of those unjustly punished;
And the silence of the dying whose hand
Suddenly grips yours.
There is the silence between father and son,
When the father cannot explain his life,
Even though he be misunderstood for it.
There is the silence that comes between husband and wife.
There is the silence of those who have failed;
And the vast silence that covers
Broken nations and vanquished leaders.
There is the silence of Lincoln,
Thinking of the poverty of his youth.
And the silence of Napoleon
After Waterloo.
And the silence of Jeanne d'Arc
Saying amid the flames, "Blessed Jesus" --
Revealing in two words all sorrows, all hope.
And there is the silence of age,
Too full of wisdom for the tongue to utter it
In words intelligible to those who have not lived
The great range of life.
And there is the silence of the dead.
If we who are in life cannot speak
Of profound experiences,
Why do you marvel that the dead
Do not tell you of death?
Their silence shall be interpreted
As we approach them.
poem by Edgar Lee Masters
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Eurydice
I
So you have swept me back,
I who could have walked with the live souls
above the earth,
I who could have slept among the live flowers
at last;
so for your arrogance
and your ruthlessness
I am swept back
where dead lichens drip
dead cinders upon moss of ash;
so for your arrogance
I am broken at last,
I who had lived unconscious,
who was almost forgot;
if you had let me wait
I had grown from listlessness
into peace,
if you had let me rest with the dead,
I had forgot you
and the past.
II
Here only flame upon flame
and black among the red sparks,
streaks of black and light
grown colourless;
why did you turn back,
that hell should be reinhabited
of myself thus
swept into nothingness?
why did you glance back?
why did you hesitate for that moment?
why did you bend your face
caught with the flame of the upper earth,
above my face?
what was it that crossed my face
with the light from yours
and your glance?
what was it you saw in my face?
the light of your own face,
the fire of your own presence?
What had my face to offer
but reflex of the earth,
hyacinth colour
caught from the raw fissure in the rock
where the light struck,
and the colour of azure crocuses
and the bright surface of gold crocuses
and of the wind-flower,
swift in its veins as lightning
and as white.
III
Saffron from the fringe of the earth,
wild saffron that has bent
over the sharp edge of earth,
all the flowers that cut through the earth,
all, all the flowers are lost;
everything is lost,
everything is crossed with black,
black upon black
and worse than black,
this colourless light.
IV
Fringe upon fringe
of blue crocuses,
crocuses, walled against blue of themselves,
blue of that upper earth,
blue of the depth upon depth of flowers,
lost;
flowers,
if I could have taken once my breath of them,
enough of them,
more than earth,
even than of the upper earth,
had passed with me
beneath the earth;
if I could have caught up from the earth,
the whole of the flowers of the earth,
if once I could have breathed into myself
the very golden crocuses
and the red,
and the very golden hearts of the first saffron,
the whole of the golden mass,
the whole of the great fragrance,
I could have dared the loss.
V
So for your arrogance
and your ruthlessness
I have lost the earth
and the flowers of the earth,
and the live souls above the earth,
and you who passed across the light
and reached
ruthless;
you who have your own light,
who are to yourself a presence,
who need no presence;
yet for all your arrogance
and your glance,
I tell you this:
such loss is no loss,
such terror, such coils and strands and pitfalls
of blackness,
such terror
is no loss;
hell is no worse than your earth
above the earth,
hell is no worse,
no, nor your flowers
nor your veins of light
nor your presence,
a loss;
my hell is no worse than yours
though you pass among the flowers and speak
with the spirits above earth.
VI
Against the black
I have more fervour
than you in all the splendour of that place,
against the blackness
and the stark grey
I have more light;
and the flowers,
if I should tell you,
you would turn from your own fit paths
toward hell,
turn again and glance back
and I would sink into a place
even more terrible than this.
VII
At least I have the flowers of myself,
and my thoughts, no god
can take that;
I have the fervour of myself for a presence
and my own spirit for light;
and my spirit with its loss
knows this;
though small against the black,
small against the formless rocks,
hell must break before I am lost;
before I am lost,
hell must open like a red rose
for the dead to pass.
poem by Hilda Doolittle
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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