Here’s one of my poems:
The Silent Symphony
Sit, sit children,
You there, be quiet and sit.
There’s a tale going around that
Is a pleasure for the senses –
The ears and the eyes and the tongue.
When the world makes its circle complete,
A travelling band will caress the uneven, pebbled roads
Connecting our towns.
Inside the rickety carriage a blind man
Will carve invisible notes onto a rigid piece of paper
With an inkless fountain pen, preparing for the show.
And with him will be many people,
With battered clothes and tired faces,
Who, on the most first of glances,
Will appear to be practising the most beautiful of music.
But do not be deceived young ones,
Their instruments are long gone, retired to another age.
Now, this is only the way it was told on the winds,
But a higher authority than I can be its only judge.
When the rickety carriage
Rolls on in to town,
The lively chatter that once filled the air
Is strangled into a melancholy whisper
And finally it becomes a deafening silence,
As the band begin to play.
First, the voiceless conductor,
With his lopsided top-hat and
His sewn lips jarringly motions his broken arms
Grasping a baton of corroded wood.
Second, the asphyxiated strings,
No horse hair to draw along,
Empty hands fingering intricate chords,
Necks all strained, heads forever tilted.
Third, a siphoned woodwind,
Holes with no substance,
Uselessly plugged with precision.
A whistling wind embarrasses them.
Fourth, the dear departed brass,
Invisible pistons change nothing,
As non-existent tunes are lost.
Arms outstretched, like children.
Finally, the eerie stillness builds to
The vacuum of percussion.
Naught is echoed in the night,
And the voiceless conductor
Expects no applause.
The rickety carriage begins a new trip
Along more uneven, pebbled roads,
To a new town, lively and amiable.
And, if you should ever happen upon a place,
Absent of warmth and friendliness,
Then the Silent Symphony has visited,
Forever heartbroken that they always take
The good things away with them.
