Into Silence

Our apartment on 71 Phillips Street was located
the Cambridge Street side of Beacon Hill where
Cambridge runs into Charles Street.

The Charles Street T-Stop is raised high,
like a hanging island, above
the sea of endless traffic during
the daytime all around.

The red brick homes of fame
and small shops with open doors
with little bells strung up
jingle sales like a golden winter carol.

But now is September,
We are standing on the roof deck
of our flat, looking out.

The sun is setting over Cambridge.
The buildings of MIT and the green
of the Esplanade glow in the evening sun.
The Charles River is still, and
the reflection of the sky in twilight appears.

The low rumbling of the T, charging
from the underground tunnel with
passengers travelling towards the crimson sunset,
resonates within us.

The sun is there. Soft like
yellow satin pillows, big and bright,
like an open sunflower, each ray
fat and wild, light radiant petals
reach out, the sky thirsty for
its quenching touch — the sky
scorched and lying in a basket
of heated clouds, red and orange
fruits blurring across the horizon.

We look out over the river
until the sun is no more,
until the sky collapses under
the weighted rage of day,
until the first stars lie scattered
upon the surface of the waters
in the unending calmness of
the day’s final throws of death.

Lights from automobiles move
in a dazzling array, like
white lightning, and inside
the buildings — the Prudential, the John Hancock,
the administrative and teaching halls along
Memorial drive, my old office in Cambridge,
close to the Longfellow Bridge— rooms
are bright with light from those resisting
the inevitable darkness, the blanket of night,
the cold ground under foot and the
stones and bricks chilled into silence.

This is where we are.