Silence is a great blue bell <br />Swinging and ringing, tinkling and singing, <br />In measure’s pleasure, and in the supple symmetry <br /> of the soaring of the immense intense wings <br /> glinting against <br />All the blue radiance above us and within us, hidden <br />Save for the stars sparking, distant and unheard in their <br /> singing. <br />And this is the first meaning of the famous saying, <br />The stars sang. They are the white birds of silence <br />And the meaning of the difficult famous saying that the <br /> sons and daughters of morning sang, <br />Meant and means that they were and they are the children <br /> of God and morning, <br />Delighting in the lights of becoming and the houses of <br /> being, <br />Taking pleasure in measure and excess, in listening as in <br /> seeing. <br /> <br />Love is the most difficult and dangerous form of courage. <br />Courage is the most desperate, admirable and noble kind of <br /> love. <br /> <br />So that when the great blue bell of silence is stilled and <br /> stopped or broken <br />By the babel and chaos of desire unrequited, irritated and <br /> frustrated, <br />When the heart has opened and when the heart has spoken <br />Not of the purity and symmetry of gratification, but action <br /> of insatiable distraction’s dissatisfaction, <br /> <br />Then the heart says, in all its blindness and faltering <br /> emptiness: <br />There is no God. Because I am hope. And hope must be <br /> fed. <br />And then the great blue bell of silence is deafened, dumbed, <br /> and has become the tomb of the living dead.<br /><br />Delmore Schwartz<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-choir-and-music-of-solitude-and-silence/
