Wordlessness Allied with Pontius Pilate
Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem
Fortingall Yew
High priests of ancient wisdom keep your tongues
In silence always. (Winds may make some sound
Among your branches.) Raise your limbs like rungs
To heaven on a vision ladder, ground
To clouds, for us to learn from. Let your bark
Be hardest silence or your roots perhaps.
Let needles or your leaves hold hard to stark
Dumb, soundless quietude while unheard saps
Rise up from fissures in earth’s rocks. Let leaves
Of olives keep their silence through their years
Of elongated tongues. Recitatives
Of darkness vie with pines of needles spears.
The wordless yews and cypresses count rings
Most silenced since inside like long dead wings.
~ Phillip Whidden
by phillipw | Mar 27, 2025 | AN, OL, TR, YE |