Chard deNiord: The Silence

You standing at the doorsteps, enter
and drink Arabic coffee with us
(you might sense you’re human like us)
you standing at the doorsteps of houses,
get out of our mornings,
we need reassurance that we
are human like you!

Mahmoud Darwish

.
I want peace right now while I’m still alive.
I don’t want to want like that pious man who wished for one leg
of the golden chair of paradise. I want a four-legged chair
right here, a plain wooden chair. I want the rest of my life peace now.

Yehuda Amichai

.
is deafening here because it amplifies
the bombs exploding “over there,”
which no matter how hard I try
not to hear, it continues to boom
inside the ear inside my ear
where the sounds of that intransigent,
ancient war exceed the speed
of light on the wings of news.
I’m whispering because I can hardly speak
in the din that cripples my tongue.
I’m releasing doves from inside
my chest through the door I’ve opened
for them—each one a priest delivering
an elegy for a child or parent or sibling
or friend who’s died at the hand
of the enemy whose God is the same
monotheistic deity with a different name.
I play a song in vain to subdue the silence
like a patient on the ward who hears
so many voices simultaneously
they cause him to scream.
Can you hear? The scream grows
louder and louder inside the silence.

Copyright 2023 Chard deNiord

Chard deNiord served as Poet Laureate of Vermont, 2015–2019. His many books include In My Unknowing (Pitt, 2020).