Buddha’s Missing Eyelid

Tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury—
From fear of being called poor actors, some make no sound;

instead, observe how others build their soundless artifice
then call it art, something that struts and makes the sounds

that real hearts make, but without the suspect sound of old-
fashioned sincerity. The smallest sound that seems to cloy

is banned. Instead, a meta-sound’s encouraged, a way
to avoid having to make the sound of the cry itself,

avoid having to sound much too sincere, much too trusting
in the world’s ability to volley back a sound that says

We hear the sound you make in the night, in solitude:
sound that leaks out from close shuttered rooms,

sound of trains, of surf churned in the wake of vessels seeking harbor;
sound that issued from the throats of those now face-down in the sand.

sand in throats
that harbor seeking,

the shuttered
solitude
in you

says that a world’s too
much itself to avoid

instead seems
suspect, struts
artifice


A reverse erasure from “Sound and Fury: a Sonnenizio” by Luisa A Igloria.

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