Simple Words
We’ve such a need for simple words like
‘bread’, ‘love’, ‘kindness’
to keep the blind from losing their way
in the dark.
We’ve such a need for silence – silence! –
in order, through the air and in our thoughts,
to hear the voice,
the murmured, modest voice,
of pigeons, ants, human beings, human hearts
and their cry of pain amid all that is
not love, not kindness, not bread.