The Language of Beauty

Inspired silence, you are my friend, revealing beauty all around me—and in me.

I bite my tongue, lest I interrupt your sage instruction.

And I hold my thoughts still within me,

lest their noise distract from your divine eloquence.

 

Please continue, as you were saying…

you were beginning to share the mysteries of this life, the magic of our times.

You were enunciating the language of beauty,

of which all creation has spoken, since the beginning,

but which I have forgotten through misuse, and moreover by abuse.

 

I am not certain when I ceased speaking our native tongue, dear silence,

and commenced instead to speak other languages, coarser and ill-refined.

I have allowed myself to become a Tower of Babel—

strange languages have infested my inner halls,

a multitude of voices competing to be heard; a rabble within me,

loud and echoing, stark against my soul’s chamber walls.

 

I must confess I’ve spoken the languages of anger, and greed,

and above all vanity and pride,

and I’ve uttered words of lust and sadness.

I’ve made speeches of self-conceit,

and made myself hoarse asserting my ambitions—

my love sonnets have been composed for and about me alone.

 

But no, dear silence, I must now refrain;

and by pain of humility,

I have stilled these foolish voices.

Please, silence, dear friend, begin again…

 

I will listen to your unspoken words—

as they glide across the morning sky,

and unfurling like newborn leaves,

glittering, and sparkly in the dewy sunlight—

they do transfix and transform me.

 

Silence—

yours is a magnificent soliloquy,

spoken in a mystery,

ushering all into a world of beauty.

 

I do perceive you speak of God.

 

~FS