The Lost Realist

An empty room in an empty house,
A wooden table in the midst, glistening.
A boombox on the table blares
And strains in the silence, listening.

A bird outside chirps incessantly,
Trying to break free, seemingly in rage.
But every tree, every leaf is mute,
The silence an overarching cage.

Standing in the room, I think mutely,
“If the silence breaks, all would be free.
It has captured and enslaved,
The bird is a slave, so is the tree.”

Conscripts to the deafening silence,
The heavens seem a deaf profanity,
No more can I brook this. I scream
A loud cry, the bugle of mutiny.

All my rage, my energy, even my self
Disappear into my deafening noise,
And suddenly I see: sound and silence
Are one, Sound is silence’s voice.

Epilogue:
Now I can hear the bird’s sonorous
Song, the boombox playing mellifluously,
And yet both are silent, as if singing
The song of silence, merrily, blissfully.