A F T E R P O E T R Y

AFTER POETRY

“For me, behind every poem or maybe within every poem, there is a kind of large silence. By which I don’t mean a void – the silence is not a void. It depends on the reader’s capacity for receiving a sense of those other silences that are behind that poem.”
Lee Tzu Pheng in Silences May Speak.
The last syllable
of your poem
ran to the edge of the page
and fell into scripted silence.
And I was left holding
the alphabets of your whispers,
wondering if you will once again
gather the clouds of your words
and etch the calligraphy of the heart
across the azure lines on my sky.
Your answer is the star-pierced
quiescence of the night sky,
the vast emptiness of the flyleaf
mourning the loss of verse,
the inarticulate maze of dead letters.
But your silence is not voiceless
for you taught me
that silence is an earlier language
learned from the womb of creativity.
Unless I return to the womb
I will never know
the delight of being born again
into the poetry
that comes after your poetry.