1:22

Silence is its own sound. In the dead of night you hear it
Prowling round the midnight gate, lifting latches;
Shadowless, it slips around corners into blackness.

Nothing can drown it out. Like the empty place
At the table, the blank spot where a coat should be
Silence mocks. Leave a space in your mind and silence

Will fill it. Silence is a shoe without a foot, a hat without
A head, a burial without the dead. Silence is the hole
That remains when the donut has gone. Merciless.

The hollow laugh, the flat blank eye of the mannikin,
The handshake that never touches your skin,
The pictureless frame are its hallmarks. Then suddenly,

In a mirror, you glimpse movement, a face.
Ears ring, the heart hammers at the gates: salvation.