by Babette Deutsch

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.