Solstice

When Laurens van der Post one night 
     In the Kalahari Desert told the Bushmen 
          He couldn't hear the stars 
Singing, they didn't believe him. They looked at him, 
     half-smiling. They examined his face 
          To see whether he was joking 
Or deceiving them. Then two of those small men 
     Who plant nothing, who have almost 
          Nothing to hunt, who live 
On almost nothing, and with no one 
     But themselves, led him away 
          From the crackling thorn-scrub fire 
And stood with him under the night sky 
     And listened. One of them whispered, 
          Do you not hear them now? 
And van der Post listened, not wanting 
     To disbelieve, but had to answer,
          No. They walked him slowly 
Like a sick man to the small dim 
     Circle of firelight and told him 
          They were terribly sorry, 
And he felt even sorrier 
     For himself and blamed his ancestors 
          For their strange loss of hearing, 
Which was his loss now. On some clear nights 
     When nearby houses have turned off their visions, 
          When the traffic dwindles, when through streets 
Are between sirens and the jets overhead 
     Are between crossings, when the wind 
          Is hanging fire in the fir trees, 
And the long-eared owl in the neighboring grove 
     Between calls is regarding his own darkness, 
          I look at the stars again as I first did 
To school myself in the names of constellations 
     And remember my first sense of their terrible distance, 
          I can still hear what I thought 
At the edge of silence were the inside jokes 
     Of my heartbeat, my arterial traffic, 
          The C above high C of my inner ear, myself 
Tunelessly humming, but now I know what they are: 
     My fair share of the music of the spheres 
          And clusters of ripening stars, 
Of the songs from the throats of the old gods 
     Still tending even tone-deaf creatures 
          Through their exiles in the desert.


The Silence of the Stars, by David Wagoner