Silence

Silence

Silence has settled on us like a shroud.
Each day goes by without a word
and you are vanished, mute, unreachable
as the Mountains of the Moon.

Silence fills its emptiness with ghosts of sound:
remembered conversations; imagined lies;
the sibilant whisperings of jealousies
insistent and corrosive as acid rain.

Silence grows like cancer, someone sang,
and so it does, stealthily, until it takes
a life of its own, becomes a palpable thing:
and is, in the end, unbreakable, incurable.

2nd March 2006