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| MIKAEL DE LARA CO |
| Silence |
| THE AUTHOR HOLDS THE COPYRIGHT TO THIS POEM. THIS IS POSTED WITH PERMISSION FROM THE AUTHOR. |
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| They say all things aspire to it, and even they, aware of the chasms their voices draw upon ether, know that that, once uttered, becomes a lie. Many lies: An almost, a not quite, a maybe, a fissure gurgling floodwater. Yesterday’s newspaper tearing at the wind. A child’s fist, swollen from hitting the same spot on a wall, over and over again. Even seen things, held things, skip lunch to save up for it, write it on their yearbook questionnaires. I want to be silence when I grow up. I took a course on The Approximation of Silence, where each student has a blackboard all to himself and once a week everyone acts out a scene from a dream. Here, the rain. Here, a house, inside it a child, muffling sobs, whispering, “One day... one day....” And a wall, hurting, saying thud, thud, thud. This poem is part of the collection that won First Prize for Poetry in the 2007 Palanca Awards |