I Wanted Only a Little

I wanted, I thought, only a little,

two teaspoons of silence—

one for sugar,

one for stirring the wetness.

No.

I wanted a Cairo of silence,

a Kyoto.

In every hanging garden

mosses and waters.

The directions of silence:

north, west, south, past, future.

It comes through any window

one inch open,

like rain driven sideways.

Grief shifts,

as a grazing horse does,

one leg to the other.

But a horse sleeping

sleeps with all legs locked.