Michael Croshaw
Orpheus in the Cave of Silence
Orpheus once entered (oh anathema)
a cave of silence. No ripple of water,
no laughter of nymphs, just heaviness
of soundlessness, solidity of rock.
Something, however, some straining,
yearning, yawning of moveless things,
of speechless and petrified things,
reached him as an undercurrent of music,
a songlessness that agonized into song
and broke the chains of stone into channels of light.
No saint’s dark soul night could have been more dense,
more sense-denying than the depth of this stillness,
but Orpheus knew that a spirit strove through weight –
that, muted in matter, a bird sang.
He would hear it, free it, let it fly.
Page(s) 29
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