VOICES 2
Fay Enos

What Is Quiet

              1

Majiro! Spilling rainlight.
A fever of wings green as citron
Through Aiea forest leaves-
All we saved, all we needed of that awful day,
That shivering.
I trust also the sturdy zinneas you brought me,
The purple broccoli plants.
How quiet everything grows.

                2.

Drugged with need, without witness,
I find deep cups of cereus
Late at night aglow with moon candor-
Holds of silence broken open wide.
Their unsullied shining is not wasted.

                3.

Marked around the hill under years of grass
The road the laden wagons took"
The way we know
What the land gave slowly to the wheels
We do not need to speak.

                4.

As unlooked for, as spontaneous,
As at nightfall the Canadian geese
Fall safely to the hollow field
Falls a quiet in me:
What you have said.

　

BACK        NEXT