Invocation

O silence, my love silence,
I have feared you: my tongue
has rattled on my teeth
dreading to be dumb so long
when I am done with breath.
    And I have needed prattle,
kind blather, and the come and go
of voices, human voices,
the sky whose moon you are,
the ground whose flower.
   But I beseech you come
now, my love silence, O
reward and freedom, balance
beyond choices, in whom alone is heard
the meditation of the twilight bird
and the never to be spoken word.


"Invocation" is from Incredible Good Fortune,
Shambhala, 2006, © 2006 by Ursula K. Le Guin;
first appeared in PoetryMagazine.com.