Silence Part 2: The Range of Human Hearing

Humans, they say, need 2 hours of silence

each day, for necessary reflection, for

setting right what is presented wrongly.

 

The interior landscape

of any woman is no different-

her secrets show themselves as shy

desert creatures in a world

of canyons and dust and plateaus-

in search of an oasis,

those moments of quietude

rest, a letting down of great weights

carried on one’s shoulders.

 

There is a silence created by a need

to search for clear, still pools

in green spaces, to see clearly

every distorted thing she ever

believed was the truth about her.

There is also the silence of a heart

breaking so thoroughly that its

scream is too high-pitched

to be discerned by the range of

human hearing.

 

It is the body that aches so deeply

to be caressed by the words

of the poem she knows you wrote

for someone else. It is holding

closed an open wound, thinking

she is too old to wait for

someone else to see her as more

than a stranger in their own desert.

 

She thinks it is irony of great depth-

that the same culture that fills

all available silence with blaring horns

and music and shouted words of

God and televisions and radios and

cars without mufflers and fireworks

and vendors of things you both

do and do not need- it is ironic that

these same people who will tell you,

“in our culture, only the rich can afford

the luxury of silence- “

 

will also tell her she has no right

to raise her voice to be heard over

the background din. The human soul

was apparently not carved here

to understand the difference

between anguish and violence.

 

Author's Note

Part 2 of a series of poems written about the assigned theme "Silence." I decided to write about the theme of silence from the perspective of a non-native person experiencing life after migrating. The original was written in Spanish and can be found here:

http://www.writerscafe.org/writing/zorra_encantada/1929069/

Picture is my own, taken at a large, loud indoor market