The Silence
by C.K. Stead
The dead we know are gone except
when dreams return them. So it was
Frank Sargeson took me aside
in Hell and said, ‘You know, my friend,
how well the wind among the reeds
is used by shaman and guru,
rabbi and priest.’ He had the face
of Dante’s much-loved preceptor
Brunetto Latini among
the sodomites, as we ambled
down the avenues of the damned;
and he, brushing ash from his sleeve
went on, ‘Those with a patch of earth
and running water lack vision,
preferring to leave such mysteries
‘to desert-and mountain-dwellers
and the poor of Varanasi.
Where little is lacking listen
‘always to the silence until
you hear it whisper its name.’ So
he faded into fire, and I,
half-waking, wrote to remember
all that he’d said—and listened for
the silence, and could not hear it.
C.K. Stead is a writer from New Zealand. He has published a number of novels and books of literary criticism, as well as poetry and short story collections. He was awarded a CBE in 1985 for services to New Zealand literature, and elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1995. His Collected Poems 1951-2006 was published in 2008 by Auckland University Press in New Zealand, and by Carcanet in the UK.