words

Let me tell you what the problem is with words. Let me tell you, with the warmth of greeting from a mute palm or at that moment when I wordlessly turn from you in misunderstanding.

The tongue in flattering falsehood deals, and tells a tale it never feels.

See this, and see how discriminate words are. We walk under the city sky and feel the rain falling on our heads, all of us beggars and bourgeois alike, be it that the shower is a blessing or an annoyance. Not so with words--sugared and yielding where something hangs in the balance, scathing in scorn, merciless in indifference.

Deceit the guilty lips impart, and hush the mandates of the heart.

But there is one thing where rain and words do not differ. You may have seen it. In the busy streets of Manila when it rains, when each little drop of water comes knocking on a sheltered heart: metal, concrete, asphalt--lies. No one listens, no one cares. Not you. Water gathers dirt and floods the city, the tears of an angel unheeded. We might have tried to listen if it wasn't here. If it was parted from us from a long time.

But souls' interpreters, the eyes, spurn such restraint and scorn disguise.

When rain, when words have left us, all that's left to do is to look at the skies. That's when we seek communion, in the silence looming more ominous than words. With tears in our eyes, a prayer in our parched lips, our palms outstretched to clutch the memory of a blessing.

We only love it when it's gone.

~~~

Italicized lines from Lord Byron's To a Beautiful Quaker.