Outposts on the Edge of a Haunting

Outposts on the Edge of a Haunting

By speech and by text 

we launch our raids 

against the unknown, 

yet never succeed 

in capturing what we pursue. 

Such expeditions 

are doomed from the start:

there is nothing, no one, to seize. 

Only a ghost, a rumour 

haunting our stations 

at the frontier 

of a vast territory stretching behind us.

Lately there has been talk 

of strange sounds 

arising in the in-between spaces, 

in the gaps between outposts 

we call words. 

But when we listen, there is nothing: 

nothing said, nothing spoken. 

“But,” said our captain, 

“what is not revealed 

in the light of speech 

is rarely equal 

to what we imagine concealed 

in the dark of silence.” 

In other words, I suppose: 

what speech leaves unsaid 

is seldom what silence contains.