Songroot

Out of where there is no movement
it is possible to speak
well-rounded words
without claim upon their origin,
trickling rivulets of truth
(more of a sound than a meaning)
that soothe, and sooth, lie not.

Rivers of word dumb the mouth.
The mind's lips are never silent,
saying so on, and so on,
simply saying, sometimes singing;
the tunes in our heads it writes.
Because we are helpless, we speak

Drain, river, drain,
swirl down to the source of speech,
before words have wings
and poets die
so by right occasion you may arise.

Words, words, you are fickle things!
Grammar's clumsy,
repetition misses the point,
no change slants the picture, ---
yet patience has something to say.

Time, you are a wonderful machine --
that creates the mouth
that spews rock and word; ---
to club the world with names
and cleave it ill by idle questions;
--- that makes the truth the mouth can't say:
loud mouth of wonder, root of lust.

o love, o world, how you mock the word
yet sing it,
shake to know the stillness.
You sigh to say your full self,
but such you must.

Yet words arrive, succeed, excel:
the sage is never wholly silent.

There breaks
over the world
the sound
of sudden clapping,
the peal of dawn,
the drum of creation;
in this stillness,
born of meaning,
mute words
mete beats
true to roots.