Silence

when on a summer dawn the birds start calling
they bring to life the silence of the dawn,
a pause in speech is silence, and silence
when the other does not speak or
you refrain from speaking, or when
you are alone at night & have no one to speak to, and silence
the waiting of the forest when the air is still
or there is danger in the air. Silence
envelops music, talk, the guns of battle. Silence,
the songs of stones & mountains, speech of lovers, breath of
poets, the outward shape of sound
is sound itself:

there is no silence in the soundless world of death.

— by Stefan Brecht