Dan Beachy-Quick - Of Silence and Song

Also by Dan Beachy-Quick

Nonfiction

Wonderful Investigations

A Whalers Dictionary

A Brighter Word Than Bright: Keats at Work

Fiction

An Impenetrable Screen of Purest Sky

Poetry

North True South Bright

Spell

Mulberry

This Nest, Swift Passerine

Circles Apprentice

Gentlessness

2017, Text by Dan Beachy-Quick

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Published 2017 by Milkweed Editions

Cover design by Mary Austin Speaker

Cover artwork by Megan Canning, All my body calls, 2008, Hand embroidery on linen with cotton, 16 12 3

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First Edition

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Beachy-Quick, Dan, 1973- author.

Title: Of silence and song / Dan Beachy-Quick.

Description: Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 2017.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017036026 (print) | LCCN 2017036678 (ebook) | ISBN 9781571319432 (ebook)

Classification: LCC PS3602.E24 (ebook) | LCC PS3602.E24 A6 2017 (print) | DDC 811/.6--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017036026

Milkweed Editions is committed to ecological stewardship. We strive to align our book production practices with this principle, and to reduce the impact of our operations in the environment. We are a member of the Green Press Initiative, a nonprofit coalition of publishers, manufacturers, and authors working to protect the worlds endangered forests and conserve natural resources. Of Silence and Song was printed on acid-free 100% postconsumer-waste paper by Friesens Corporation.

for Kristy, Hana, Iris, & my mother

prism, light

Every spirit makes its house; but afterwards the house confines the spirit.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON, FATE

There is indeed the inexpressible. This shows itself; it is the mystical.

LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN, TRACTATUS LOGICO-PHILOSOPHICUS

Light that makes some things seen, makes some things invisible.

SIR THOMAS BROWNE, THE GARDEN OF CYRUS; OR, THE QUINCUNX

What is worse, knowledge is made by oblivion.

SIR THOMAS BROWNE, PSEUDODOXIA EPIDEMICA

Thought kills me that I am not thought.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, SONNET44

Methinks my own soul must be a bright invisible green.

HENRY DAVID THOREAU, A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERRIMACK RIVERS

CONTENTS

Table of Contents

On our walk my youngest daughter asked me, What are the songs you dont know.

Thats a hard question, I said.

Tell me the songs you dont know.

Silence was the best description.

On the same walk we found a bird lying dead on the ground. It had a long, dark, slightly curved beak. Streaks of white not quite white on the head, a color I might call dry wheat. Not a woodpecker, I said. Iris said, Nope, not a woodpecker. Not the right markings. The shafts of the feathers had no bright colors. I couldnt identify the bird. A plover? A snipe?

Later I asked Iris if the dead bird scared her.

No, she said. It gave me an idea.

I had thought for years how best to begin.

Maybe just a blank page.

Some way of showing the precedent silence. But then I doubted so simple a gesture could make it felt: that silence. I worried the gesture would seem obvious. But then I remembered whats most obvious is what Im most interested in.

What the obvious hides in itself. Not as a secret. Like a breath being held.

Like a child believes in the dark and so doubts God, but every morning reverses the conclusions. Like doubt or faith when they begin in us by acting like one another. Only later do they act opposed.

The trouble is not that what is pure is complicated past our understanding. Whats quiet is just too simple to be understood. One method might be to liken that silence to the inner life once you learn to accept that the inner life is just another myth.

Socrates asks: Can a man know and also not know what he knows.

Know thyself. The imperative acts so simple, but then you try to follow the command for your whole life, as one might follow an echo back to a source, but the source is just a cave, and the shadows living there are quiet. And all along you thought youd find yourself there. That you lived there. That youd come home, source somehow of yourself. But it isnt true.

In Greek, , the word for truth, might best be translated: that which makes itself obvious. There are other best ways to define it.

The stone the builders cast out has become the cornerstone. In Psalm 118:22 I found a comfort and a clue. Id like to say that I repeated this verse to myself ceaselessly, but that would be a lie. I didnt even know it mattered to me until I happened upon the words as a child happens upon a forgotten toy and remembers suddenly the life that had been in it. Mostly this experience happens to children when they become adults. I just found the words in the box. But the box was my head.