Silence

Babette Deutsch – 1895-1982

Silence with you is like the faint delicious
Smile of a child asleep, in dreams unguessed:
Only the hinted wonder of its dreaming, 
The soft, slow-breathing miracle of rest. 
Silence with you is like a kind departure
From iron clangor and the engulfing crowd
Into a wide and greenly barren meadow, 
Under the bloom of some blue-bosomed cloud;
Or like one held upon the sands at evening, 
When the drawn tide rolls out, and the mixed light 
Of sea and sky enshrouds the far, wind-bellowed
Sails that move darkly on the edge of night.