The Silence - Wendell Berry
Though the air is full of singing my head is loud with the labor of words. Though the season is rich with fruit, my tongue hungers for the sweet of speech. Though the beech is golden I cannot stand beside it mute, but must say "It is golden," while the leaves stir and fall with a sound that is not a name. It is in the silence that my help is, my aim. A song whose line I cannot make or sing sounds men's silence like a root. Let me say and not mourn: the world lives in the death of speech and sings there.