SILENCES

You who have known my city for a day

And heard the music of her steepled bells,

Then laughed, and passed along your vagrant way,

Carrying only what the city tells

To those who listen solely with their ears;

You know St. Matthew's swinging harmonies,

And old St. Michael's tale of golden years

Far less like bells than chanted memories.

Yet there is something wanting in the song

Of lyric youth with voice unschooled by pain.

And there are breathing stillnesses that throng

Dim corners, and that only stir again

When bells are dumb. Not even bronze that beats

Our heart-throbs back can tell of old defeats.

But you who take the city for your own,

Come with me when the night flows deep and kind

Along these narrow ways of troubled stone,

And floods the wide savannas of the mind

With tides that cool the fever of the day:

One with the dark, companioned by the stars,

We'll seek St. Philip's, nebulous and gray,

Holding its throbbing beacon to the bars,

A prisoned spirit vibrant in the stone

That knew its empire of forgotten things.

Then will the city know you for her own,

And feel you meet to share her sufferings;

While down a swirl of poignant memories,

Herself shall find you in her silences.

Once coaches waited row on shining row

Before this door; and where the thirsty street

Drank the deep shadow of the portico

The Sunday hush was stirred by happy feet,

Low greetings, and the rustle of brocade,

The organ throb, and warmth of sunny eyes

That flashed and smiled beneath a bonnet shade;

Life with the lure of all its swift disguise.

Then from the soaring lyric of the spire,

Like the composite voice of all the town,

The bells burst swiftly into singing fire

That wrapped the building, and which showered down

Bright cadences to flash along the ways

Loud with the splendid gladness of the days.

War took the city, and the laughter died

From lips that pain had kissed. One after one

All lovely things went down the sanguine tide,

While death made moaning answer to the gun.

Then, as a golden voice dies in the throat

Of one who lives, but whose glad heart is dead,

The bells were taken; and a sterner note

Rang from their bronze where Lee and Jackson led.

The rhythmic seasons chill and burn and chill,

Cooling old angers, warming hearts again.

The ancient building quickens to the thrill

Of lilting feet; but only singing rain

Flutters old echoes in the portico;

Those who can still remember love it so.