Your Silence

I wrote this one Summer day at Laurelhurst Park. As with most of my poems, the first two lines came to me in a sing-song way, and the rest followed slowly and ploddingly from there. I suppose I was thinking of Elijah's journey up Mt. Horeb, and so the language of the poem tends to mirror the perception of God not as wind or earthquake or fire, but as a still, small voice in the silence, which is yet infinitely more powerful than any of the preceding chaos. As a side note, I unconsciously mimicked Chesterton's rhyming pattern and meter in his dedication to 'The Man Who Was Thursday,' which reads thus: "Not all unhelped we held the fort, our tiny flags unfurled; Some giants laboured in that cloud to lift it from the world." If you are not familiar with this poem, you should read it immediately. Though it is limited somewhat by Chesterton's rigid two-step style, it has some of the most beautiful and powerful imagery that I have ever come across. It is, by far, my favorite Chesterton poem. You can find a copy of it here: To Edmund Clerihew Bentley.


I never gazed upon your face,
nor heard the words you spoke.
Your silence was a thunderclap
that sudden on me broke,
like staffs against the knotted backs
that cut the furrows deep
and terror calling soldiers
to an everlasting sleep.
I could not name the moment
when your standard rose, unfurled,
but when it did, I heard your silence
ring throughout the world.