See You in the Dark: Poems

Man with Unspoken Words

35 MAN WITH UNSPOKEN WORDS As much as he talked— and he talked so much, often in a haste approaching frenzy— he never said, or so it seemed, the words he needed most to say, most needed us to hear, the words that would make plain the spate of other, needless words. He would grow so excited by the pressure of those straining words that craved release, the air around him trembled with their clatter. And all the while we tried to show ourselves prepared to hear what his flushed face and uneasy eyes hinted could barely be suppressed an instant longer. Still, by evening’s end, the end of every evening in his urgent presence, that fevered cordiality, the words remained unspoken, receding from the verge, although the sway and tremble of the air was in no way diminished, as though the words rocked on its currents, and only our clumsy deafness caused, as we said good night, his gloom and fret at yet another visit failed. We never heard the words. Yet afterwards, we’d wonder, Could it be he said them? Could we, in our earnest readiness to hear, have missed them? ...