The staccato scratch of the silent sweeper’s bouncing broom—I was watching the man as he worked, pushing the eclectic debris into a pile—was like music. A soft sound, one of those sounds you don’t hear. You would, and no one would call you a liar, say it is silent; you do not hear the beating of your heart, or the thousand and one other sounds your body makes. Can you hear the echo in the sewers there? These towers of buildings themselves, they are a sound, a block of sound, a shadow of silence that shapes the whole noise of the city. Quietly, the man works. He’s got whatever junk he was after; it’s in a bag, and he’s taking it to the bin. Now, I watch him reline the bin—fresh, youthful garbage can, waiting for your first apple core, some candy bar wrapper, a bouquet of dried roses, their wilted petals the last remnant of a dead love—what poetry is garbage! Garbage poetry cannot see the explosion of life that is contained in that mold-injected plastic bin! Is this not Christ sweeping the narrow lane of this humble building’s small park? Is he not Santa Claus with that great sack upon his shoulders? Bear witness world to the things you call silence. See that which is invisible to you and you’ll find heaven!
There is one cloud in the blue sky above my head. I would weep for that color blue if, for some irreverence or tantrum on my part, or even if I were, heaven save me, to live like Job, it was taken away as a father takes away a toy in punishment. I would be irreconcilable without it! Would I even live? Yet I do not weep for having it. I look up and feel such love in my heart that I think this too will be death. There are two things we call death here on earth. Here, there is a cloud—not even a cloud, a whisp, a tail of a cloud, the merest hint, just a reminder, that clouds are a thing even when summer drives them off. Who dares look up to the sky and see the awesome weight of these weightless things? The pressing meaning of their flippant design! I need no fermented grape to meet Baccas. Nothing is so wild as that regal swath passing overhead—barely seen. I knew not its coming, and in my praises—praises now turned eulogy—it is gone. There is a death of love and a death of love. There is a death that sunders love. There is a love that sunders death. I think, were I to die on this bench with my half eaten lunch beside me, it would be the other kind. I am so full of wonder and desire, as though God were coming for me now. Would I die to have that color blue? I feel that I might. I would die without it too.
Tale Told 