poem: C. Derick Varn

LIMITATIONS: TONE TO TONE

Much has been said on thunderous silence:
the gradual unmooring of the voice you hear,
long half-drowned in the inky past, and if the
scream you have choked back, kicked open
your lips and drank the greenish air. There

is more to say on nothing than can be said:
someone is feeding sparrows, someone is
becoming the small world, and sparrows
fly to become nations, and nations become
noise, and noise, the parataxis. Like a

hawk, voice wants to ride a mechanical
horse into the heaven, break the harmony
of the planets, and place the notes in new
order, place the notes into a chorus only
silence hears. The silence knows how

to rumble the bones, how to cut to the
quick, how to feed sparrows, to end
the end chirping, how to unsing
the national anthems, how to take
away the hymn of a land that was
never ours in the first place.

 
 
 

C. DERICK VARN is a poet and teacher who lives in South Korea three out of four seasons of the year. He has the necessary MFA in poetry, and a few publications. He also likes traveling, which is good, since he is currently expatriated.