- Silence in the Age of Noise -
By John Herlihy
A white snow of silence heard on mountain peaks
Recalls the breathless awakening the dawn seeks.
The ghostly movement seen in the budding flower
Multiplied a thousand times in the garden’s bower.
Who hears the million steps of the caterpillar’s legs
To whisper sweet nothings with the delicacy of eggs.
Have you listened to the music of sunrise and sunset,
Melodies of days passing of our happiness and regret.
Silence in our cumbersome age of noise a fragile thing,
Shattered into pieces the cacophony of sound will bring.
Quietly, silence makes itself known in ways that glisten;
Wisely, silence teaches people the fine art how to listen.
You may seek an entire lifetime for an absence of sound;
In today’s caustic world, true silence may never be found.
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(c) John Herlihy January 2019
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When I was in my 20s, now many years in my past, I regularly left the supremely disharmonic enclave that was Berkeley to spend my weekends high among the fastness and solitude of the Sierra Nevada summits. Up there, no man-made noises dared assault my senses. The great silence that prevailed was not unlike the quiet, contemplative atmosphere one finds in the naive of a great cathedral, broken only by the whispered songs of the wind as it played upon the snowfields and down the couloirs. It was very cathartic. After several days in such perfectly natural peacefulness, I was able to return again to cope with the human cacophony you so aptly cite in this piece, for another week.