Sound and Silence
Music
by Jane Hirshfield
Why should they please us so,
those impossible runs,
or the knowledge
that the pianist’s hand
has spanned an inhuman distance?
That someone years ago conceived
this might be true
and once again it’s proved?
Light bends in water,
breaks inside cut glass;
I watched this endlessly as a child.
And now do not know which one
I want more
when sometimes I hear the sound,
sometimes the silence,
and they are equally beautiful
and bare.