Mornings as mute as Trappist monks
spill their heirlooms abroad
which we gather up in our inadequate arms ;
Silences riven deep within wounds
which no longer bleed ;
cadences and timbres of speech
uttered by tongues torn from their mouths ;
Indistinguishable now from the grunts of swine
those embellishments and hyperbole
of a language whose own practitioners
succumbed to artifice ;
And who is like unto the Void
and the Stillness thereof ?
Whose breath is it that alights
on the pristine inviolate surface
and for a moment deceives
the mirror itself ?
Poignant and exquisitely crafted .