The specialist told him: "Fine, let's leave it at that. The treatment is done: you're deaf. That's how It is you have quite lost your hearing." And he understood only too well, not having heard. -Well, thank you, sir, for deigning to make A fine coffin of my head. Now I shall be able, with legitimate pride, To understand all on trust. . . . Indeed @3by eye@1. -But watch that jealous eye, serving For your hocked ear! . . . Ah, no . . . What good is showing off? If I whistle too loudly in ridicule's face, To my face, and lowly, it can spit in my eye! . . . A dumb puppet, I, on a banal string! -Tomorrow, Along the street, a friend could take my hand And call me old post . . . or, more kindly, nothing; And I'd come back with: Not bad, thanks, and you! If someone shouts a word at me, I'm mad for understanding; If another says nothing: could it be out of pity? . . . Always, like a rebus, I struggle to catch A word catercorner . . . No -- They left me out! Or-reverse of the coin-some officious stuffed shirt, His lower lip wagging as though he were grazing, Fancies himself conversing . . . And I, gnawing within, keep still: A grinning idiot-looking intelligent! -Gray woolen cap pulled down over my soul! And-the donkey's kick . . . Giddyap! -A good lady, Old Lemonade Peddler, and of Passion, too! Might come up to drool her sanctimonious sympathy In my Eustacian tube-full blast, like a horn- And I not even able to step on her corn! -Silly as a virgin, aloof as a leper, I'm there, but absent . . . Is he a dunce, they want to know, A muzzled poet, or just a crab? . . . A shrug of the shoulders, and that means: Deaf. -Frenzied torment of an acoustic Tantalus! I see words flying I cannot snatch; Impotent flycatcher, eaten by a mosquito, Target-head with free pot shots for all! O heavenly music: to hear a sea shell Grate on plaster! A razor, a knife Scrape in a cork! A couplet on the stage! A live bone being sawn! A gentleman! A rondeau! -Nothing -- I babble to myself . . . Words I toss to the air @3Off the cuff@1, not knowing if I speak Hindu, Or perhaps duck talk, like the clarinet Of a blockhead blindman mistaking the stops. Go then, tipsy pendulum gone loose in my head! Beat up this fine tom-tom, cracked tinny pianola That renders a woman's voice a doorbell, A cuckoo! . . . Sometimes: a buzzing gnat . . . -Lie down, my heart, and beat your wing no more. In the dark-lantern let us snuff the candle out, And all that once vibrated there-I know no longer where- Dungeon where they come to draw the bolt across the door. -Be mute for me, pensive Idol. Both of us, for each other's sake, forgetting to speak, Say not a word to me: nothing will I answer . . . And nothing then can mar our understanding. @3Silence is golden@1 (St. John Chrysostom). | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE RAT by WILLIAM HENRY DAVIES WALDEINSAMKEIT by RALPH WALDO EMERSON PEARLS OF THE FAITH: 84. DHU'L JADAL WA'L IKRAM by EDWIN ARNOLD PSALM 29. AFFERTE DOMINO by OLD TESTAMENT BIBLE TO THE GOLDEN-CROWNED SPARROW IN ALASKA by JOHN BURROUGHS HATE ME A LITTLE by WILL CHAMBERLAIN |