Words and Silence

All of us in German babbling
Paradisal words together

---Goethe.

"But you can't speak German, you cheat!"
"Ah, but there I'd have a German soul"

You think of something to say but find nothing-except for a few tired cliches. You so desired greatness of soul. But such things are only conferred, not a response to wants and human longing. And you are without title. You wanted to be silver-tongued, speak honey-dewed words with a rare eloquence, and without hesitation. More: a hand guided, a mind nimble, brain cells flashing with the fire of lightning. Instead, you look at mirrors framed by dark wood all day, stone-faced, and think of the softness that has departed from your eyes.

There are so many words in the world. You think: when will we understand the silence...

Hammershoi: Startled silence and bare interiors. Outside: everything is a haze and all voices are muffled by the snow. Like an ark in a storm. Occasionally a tree branch will tap the window or the frames will be rattled by a sudden gust of wind, but otherwise all one can hear is the grandfather clock ticking and the regular passing of time. The old wooden floorboards creak, on their own, as if the wood was remembering the forest.

There's no place for the way I feel.
--Paula Fox

Backs are turned. Don't look. The curve of the shoulders: the strange presence of classical beauty in the northern light. Angular thoughts persist. Faces are turned resolutely away but always to something we cannot see-their own private worlds or a momentary awareness of loss. Chairs pushed back, a table set for a meal for someone who will never come. The pictures on the wall are blank, the rooms are largely empty and the white doors are open (someone has just left or is expected to arrive)-a stark existence that awaits only the illumination from somewhere else.

In the window on glass shelves there stood an ornament collection of small bottles, Venetian and Swedish. They came with the house. The sun now caught them. They were pierced with the light. Herzog saw the waves, the threads of colour, the spectral intersecting bars, and especially a great blot of flaming white on the centre of the wall...