The sounds of silence

In a calm state I listen to whispers

That never come and never leave

From a valid nowhere pending

It arrives to call me home

Upon assuming they were bells

Echoing from a distant existence

Or maybe of the skies and seas

In its vast realm of ringing bells

Constantly at my ears tonight

Never making noise, belonging nowhere

I see somehow in this unknown silence

The sound of a soundless noise

The singing of the air, the face of space

And although it calls me with a human sense

It leaves no trace of form and emptiness

Is this the silence of the loud mind?

Or the clutter of the soundless self?

* A Buddhist Zen poem by Tam Lac 2003 11/08/05