The silent place
Two sets of heavy doors,
solid as weightlifters’ shoulders
as they roll on their hinges noiseless
apart from a small cough
of protest or welcome
and then you’re in the space:
the grand rectangular
mural-encrusted incense-hinting
carved varnished gilded space
with its horizontal grid of wooden seats
and its wide, arched ceiling of glass and sky.
And the silence –
the silence like a giant beast
softly adjusting its bulk, its thick limbs –
the silence almost broken
by the sound of candles burning,
by the sound of your own breath –
the wound-easing silence
unnerving you with its questions,
insisting it isn’t an absence –
the inhabited silence.