Minerva by C. H. Sisson

Minerva

If silence were enough

I might well have it here,

And yet the word will puff

And blow until I hear

As it climbs the vast hill

From the dark pit where none

Can apprehend it till

It sees the distant sun.

In the pit only sleep;

In the sun only death:

One moment on the steep

It draws a waking breath.

I go to meet it where

It touches life at full:

‘Salut, mon fils, mon frère,

Touch hands, but do no pull.’

You pull, and I go down

Where silence holds me fast.

I pull, and with a frown

You mutter and push past.

Only a moment’s poise

Gives us a common mind,

Mere silence and mere noise

Shown up as being blind,

As when, before a form

Containing all I seek,

I recognise a norm

And do not try to speak.

C. H. Sisson, Antidotes (Manchester: Carcanet, 1991), 36.