Orpheus is Silent
Your life was measureless even though I tried
and you would smile, saying
life is lived in silences,
it’s what you don’t play.
I said I understood,
Miles said the same.
I lied.
You delighted in my songs, I thought,
but you said that I should speak.
Songs were fine, but not as beautiful as me.
Eurydice,
I just wanted you to see...
I just thought–
There was more inside the songs than I could ever...
I mean,
if I could make the rocks and streams and trees all move
then my music must be good and true
which is more than I can say for me.
The Gods don’t care for plain and simple speech
so why was it enough for you?
To you, the greatest secret I could sing
nobody could hear.
It left the rocks to stoic slumber
and the streams to giddy chatter
and the trees to dance in place
with their outstretched hallelujah gestures.
A secret that would lose the interest of the Gods
and my place in royal courts.
My fame and name would fade
to libraries and entropy.
History does not remember silence.
Were you trying to tell me
love is marked by absence?
Eurydice, it went like this:
Come I to Hades’ gates.
Big, sure,
but Joshua brought down bigger
and I’m a better singer.
Come I to Hades’ gates
to save Eurydice,
to charm the venom from her veins
and restore the almond luster to her cheek again.
Come I to Hades’ gates
to entertain her devils
to beguile her to life
and restring her fatal thread.
Come I to Hades’ gates to sing,
and so I sang.
The gates gaped wide
and even those who knew death longer cried
remembering that life could be so sad.
But you were not among the dead and deathless
who gathered on the banks of Styx
stirred by my performance.
And so I spoke,
I screamed,
I cried
like every tortured soul in hell
my voice was indiscernible
I threw my lyre on the ground
and bashed my vocal chords like cymbals
and for all my discipline and breath
I hardly made a sound
just a sad and dying fall
an unpoetic rattle.
And then you came, Eurydice,
to see me away.
There was no speech for which the Gods would set you free
and no song for which you would follow me.
There was nothing said.
There was nothing left to say.