Soon it will be possible to speak again.
And then the silence will really be silence
and not just a form of broken noise.
The dreary, weightless lies we keep telling will be heavy and electric,
and hurt the world very softly.
The torturers will revive, and begin to pick up their pliars,
and the tortured will scream as if that one sound
could announce the beginning of something final.
Our hearing will be very acute,
and the acoustic will sharpen and sharpen until
in a daze, we'll hear the stealthy footfalls of an unstable God
walking through the blizzard ahead of us
crowned with white roses and almost translucent snow.

Soon it will be possible to speak again.
I'll ring you, we'll talk for hours,
and our conversation will be simple and unconstrained,
and I'll be able to use the word 'care'
as if you could hear it and, hearing it, understand.
And this strange interregnum, this period of confusion,
will be over, and the floodwaters recede:
the tips of the mountains will peep above the waves,
the bird of the story will alight in the exposed branches,
and the dead, instead of gaping at themselves like nonplussed children,
will be totally dead, and give up at last their thoughts of living.

Soon it will be possible to wake again.
The sun will rise, people will stretch and cry.
The sea will be the sea, and not this braying mule of saltwater;
the gulls, scattering like a broken crown, will be regal and desolate.
Ordinary life will recommence: there'll be moments of peace,
and this strange roaring, this fury that moves in the streets,
this sound of nothingness that roars without cause or end
will abate: the sea will fall back into the sea,
and the gulls, scattering above us like a broken crown,
will simply be gulls, and not regal at all.

Soon it will be possible to speak again.
But for now, this strange sound, far off and yet internal,
this whisper of a roar,
like an ocean beginning to return to a dry sea bed,
goes on. Something, it seems, is coming closer.
For now, we're pitched around, fuzzy and unearthed,
and while this hissing, cruel magic persists
real speech diminishes, and meaning grows lonely.

Soon it will be possible to speak again.
The storm will pass over, the breeze will fall;
in the calm, rainwater will percolate down through the branches,
and the clouds will move more slowly across the sky,
and then seem not to move at all.
Soon it will be possible to say that I love you,
and to mean what I say:
but for now, the storm does not relent.
Soon it will be possible to speak again,
and then I - I will fall silent.