Angel Song

Tell me how the silence speaks only to you
in choruses of one.
While my ears burn to the ringing and throngs
of sounds anon.
Does the vibrato of your inner ear
ever hear, the soft fall of a dead sparrow?
Can it distinguish the difference
between a babies cry of need or
the war cry of a warrior thundering through a battlefield
in stirrups and spurs? Gun fire! Explosions!
Rushing! Screams!
The nightingale lamps flicker and only the dead see
the sine waves humming on their ashen flights
to quieter places.

I listened once for the sound of a
dead sparrow falling and the war cry of a warrior.
And the silence spoke to me
in choruses of one.