Don't let the length of this poem stop you from reading it. There are so many truths, that if you actually think about what its saying.. something will ring true for you. You will know the exact feeling. When I read these individual lines...
I have known the silence of the stars and of the sea
And the silence of a great love,
Memories resurface. I remember moments in time where everything was perfect. That time where I stopped and looked up at the stars or down at the canal or over the valley. Time stops. Life is perfect and simple. Cherish those moments of silence when all is right with the world. In that moment, when everything stops, time isn't lost. It's gained. Something happens where even the biggest worry disappears and seems small and insignificant when compared with what is. It's that ah-ha moment that has the potential to change your life.
And the silence of an embittered friendship
I don't know what life has in store for me, all I know is that things happen for a reason. People make mistakes and the only thing to do is to learn from them. I have regrets. "What happened doesn't define what it was." -A.J.
I know that my life is going exactly the way it's supposed to. Someday, somehow it'll all work out, but until then the only thing I can do is find joy in the good things.
SILENCE by EDGAR LEE MASTERS
I have known the silence of the stars and of the sea,
And the silence of the city when it pauses,
And the silence of a man and a maid,
And the silence of the sick
When their eyes roam about the room.
And I ask: For the depths,
Of what use is language?
A beast of the field moans a few times
When death takes its young.
And we are voiceless in the presence of realities --
We cannot speak.
A curious boy asks an old soldier
Sitting in front of the grocery store,
"How did you lose your leg?"
And the old soldier is struck with silence,
Or his mind flies away
Because he cannot concentrate it on Gettysburg.
It comes back jocosely
And he says, "A bear bit it off."
And the boy wonders, while the old soldier
Dumbly, feebly lives over
The flashes of guns, the thunder of cannon,
The shrieks of the slain,
And himself lying on the ground,
And the hospital surgeons, the knives,
And the long days in bed.
But if he could describe it all
He would be an artist.
But if he were an artist there would be deeper wounds
Which he could not describe.
There is the silence of a great hatred,
And the silence of a great love,
And the silence of an embittered friendship.
There is the silence of a spiritual crisis,
Through which your soul, exquisitely tortured,
Comes with visions not to be uttered
Into a realm of higher life.
There is the silence of defeat.
There is the silence of those unjustly punished;
And the silence of the dying whose hand
Suddenly grips yours.
There is the silence between father and son,
When the father cannot explain his life,
Even though he be misunderstood for it.
There is the silence that comes between husband and wife.
There is the silence of those who have failed;
And the vast silence that covers
Broken nations and vanquished leaders.
There is the silence of Lincoln,
Thinking of the poverty of his youth.
And the silence of Napoleon
After Waterloo.
And the silence of Jeanne d'Arc
Saying amid the flames, "Blessed Jesus" --
Revealing in two words all sorrows, all hope.
And there is the silence of age,
Too full of wisdom for the tongue to utter it
In words intelligible to those who have not lived
The great range of life.
And there is the silence of the dead.
If we who are in life cannot speak
Of profound experiences,
Why do you marvel that the dead
Do not tell you of death?
Their silence shall be interpreted
As we approach them.
