One Picture Away From Mania III

CARTOGRAPHIES OF SILENCE (No.6)

The scream
of an illegitimate voice

It has ceased to hear itself, therefore
it asks itself

How dó I exist?

This was the silence I wanted to break in you
I had questions but you would not answer

I had answers but you could not use them
This is useless to you and perhaps to others

CARTOGRAPHIES OF SILENCE (No.7)

It was an old theme even for me:
Language cannot do everything-

chalk it on the walls where the dead poets
lie in their mausoleums

If at the will of the poet the poem
could turn into a thing

a granite flank laid bare, a lifted head
alight with dew

If it could simply look you in the face
with naked eyeballs, not letting you turn

till you, and I who long to make this thing,
were finally clarified together in its stare

~Adrienne Rich