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The book The House of the World has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and is now available on Amazon.

The Deaf Man

He plays a tune on something inside him.
It is not a harp or a drum,
it doesn’t sing or clang.
It in fact resides in perfect silence,
in a pure tonal harmony with quiet,
like a flower nestled in the bud,
a face obscured in sleep,
under a blanket of inner dawns.

It is composing,
or rather he is listening,
and in a heartbroken way,
in a joyous way,
in a stadium of fear
or a hall of pleading recurrence,
his soul demands that he sing.
Without hearing,
play without notes,
write scores that are invisible
to the wind,
that say to him,
you do not know what you are.

You do not hear yourself,
your face does not appear
in the pool of a mirror,
but you sing and I hear.
You sing and they hear,
and someday
the sad, deaf box of your heart will open,
and music will sound in you,
and the bells will ring,
and the sadness disappear forever,
replaced by music.

Published inIndex of all Poems