At times now from some margin of the day
I can hear birds of another country -- W.S. Merwin
My ears have been attuned for so long
to the music of the day, its traffic noise
and wisdom peddlers chattering on
machines. Always someone selling or
telling me what I must own, proffering
slogans on how to live. Always this sea
of sound, this overture I never asked for,
all these voices from a thousand
different throats. I have become an ear
in the congregation, a lost wanderer
tied to a mast and bound to hear
the endless song. Let me slip
into the cave of silence, that pleasant
gloom, that mist where certainty
dissolves and all things become possible
in the distant warbling of mysterious birds.
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