Poem: Sounds!

By Arian Galdini

I see the sky without eyes.

Not by light.

Not by night’s mercy.

But by that weight

that falls upon the soul

when a man, at last,

sits down

and lays his ear

against the breast of the earth.

That is where everything begins.

Not as vision.

Not as idea.

Not as named greatness.

But as that deep beating

the hurried ear cannot catch,

nor the eye that wants to feed on brightness,

but only the man

who has stayed long enough

under the world’s weight

to know

that weight, after living long enough in us,

begins to turn into sound.

That is why I know infinity

without seeing it.

Not because it has no end,

but because it is rich beyond ending,

like water under stone,

unseen,

and still keeping the earth alive.

I listen to the earth

with eyes that cannot be filled,

to bread,

when it breaks upon the table

and holds the house together more firmly

than men’s speeches,

to the mother’s name,

when it is spoken low,

not because it is small,

but because it is holy,

to the flag,

when it does not move to be seen,

but stands upright

like a wound that will not accept shame,

to the threshold,

bearing the weight of arrival and departure

without asking for eyes,

to the living things

that cannot make a sound

and still carry life

as pain’s cleanest proof,

to the mountains,

which do not teach us pride,

but measure,

to the sea,

which does not answer,

because it carries questions older than we are,

to the stone,

which has learned not to fall

even when hearts want to fall.

Often we wander

like sleepers on their feet.

Now a man walks

with a screen in his hand

as with a false lantern.

He lifts it to his face,

not to see deeper,

but to keep from looking

into his own dark.

That little light

fills his eye.

Not his heart.

And still

I lay my ear upon the earth.

Because the earth does not applaud.

It holds.

It holds the bones.

It holds the seed.

It holds the father’s sweat.

It holds the mother’s prayer.

It holds the trace of the one

who refused to become smaller

than the word he carried.

It holds, too, the shame

of the one who sold himself.

The earth does not confuse.

It does not forget.

This is how I hear history.

Not as a parade of names.

Not as a calendar of kings.

But as one long beating

under the stones of a ground

not wholly undone,

not by iron,

not by fear,

not by sleep.

There I hear an Albanian man.

Not when he cheers.

When he holds.

When he shares the bread.

When he does not carry mud across the threshold.

When he speaks the mother’s name low.

When he lets the flag stand upright

like a wound,

not as a thing for sale.

When he understands

that honour is not noise,

but weight

borne without witnesses.

There is a silence that is a grave.

There is a silence that is God.

Neither speaks.

There is a kind of listening

that does not let you lie.

There,

the sky judges without showing itself.

The mountain bears upon its back

what centuries left standing.

The sea asks

without waiting for an answer.

And I know

that its end

is not where the world ends,

but where man,

at last,

can bear to listen.

Then they come close enough to touch:

the earth,

the bread,

the wound,

the silence,

and that last sound

which others call darkness,

while beneath it

something without a name

has laid its ear

upon us.

Arian Galdini