Song for the Silent

DOWN here the mule leans in the traces,
The plow swims through the loam
And men at dusk turn quiet faces
To chimney smoke and home.
The roof is touched, then, by the first star’s finger,
A lamp stands in the wall;
Inside the house, slow sparse words linger,
Slow shadows rise and fall.
Out where the tracery of trees is cool
The plow leans toward the shed
In whose black cave the mule
Lies on his rustling bed.
Deep dark and silence come,
The mule no longer stirs,
The house, the darkened room
Seem filled with whisperers:
No sound but quiet breathing,
No light but from the star,
Whose beams through starlight and dark forests weaving
Form webs to where there are
Some other breathers lost in woods and clearing,
Some other breathers in the starry night,
Living their days beyond all others’ hearing,
Beyond all others’ sight.
But not beyond the web that holds them
To plow, to mule, to star,
And with light, lovely majesty enfolds them
And all earth’s silent breathers, lone and far;
Breathers and brothers in the world’s dark reaches,
Brothers at peace within the web of light,
Free of the day and all the ill day teaches,
At rest now in the silver of the night.

The mannikins of state who scheme astutely
To blot each other’s names from history’s page
Forget that here in lonely cabins mutely
Men watch the feuds they wage.
But when through roads by ghosts of soldiers haunted
The crippled boys come back to mule and star,
If they shall miss the brotherhood they wanted
Our leaders may learn who the silent are.