Must
After The Waves by Virginia Woolf
Here again there should be music, you say,
between the blackened sea and garden gate.
The bird should chirp, announce the day,
the threat of dawn. I say just wait
a moment: waves of white will harden sea
and garden ivy, stilling shadows. Must
the sun still rise among still-rustling greens
of formless shades and shatter into dust
the speechless dark? And must we whip into
the sea our sense that poetry ought knock
at dawn? Our words are wrong, the bird attests, too,
and making music wrongly only blocks
the rushless, mustless lilt of waves and leaves.
Still silent, streaming, darkness leaves them be.
Sarah Reardon is a teacher from Maryland. She has worked as Managing Editor for Front Porch Republic, and her writing has appeared in First Things, Plough, Ekstasis Magazine, and elsewhere.
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