Let Us Ravel the Silence
--Michael Palmer 

Let us ravel the silence,
its pages turning 

It is a hum, after all, of no sound,
a buzz of absent bees, 

a swirl of sky licked by flame
and a waste of sea, 

reeds bending east towards a tentative shore,
scatter song of light’s passage 

across a curving earth
There is a bridge in the bare distance 

It is a bridge between silences,
bridge of steel where once 

the Emperor’s dragon was meant to pass
bearing the palaces of the gods on its back, 

brows furled over blazing eyes,
scales of gold coating the torso 

And always the stones at sea-bottom
like extinguished stars  

The sun here neither rises nor sets
Does chalk emit a breath

"Palmer recomposes the measures of poetic song for our time, often on the ground of gone."