Rhapsody of the Deaf Man

The specialist told him: "Fine, let's leave it at that.
The treatment is done: you're deaf. That's how
It is you have quite lost your hearing."
And he understood only too well, not having heard.

-Well, thank you, sir, for deigning to make
A fine coffin of my head.
Now I shall be able, with legitimate pride,
To understand all on trust...

Indeed by eye.* -But watch that jealous eye, serving
For your hocked ear! ... Ah, no ... What good is
showing off?
If I whistle too loudly in ridicule's face,
To my face, and lowly, it can spit in my eye!...

A dumb puppet, I, on a banal stringl-Tomorrow,
Along the street, a friend could take my hand
And call me old post. . . or, more kindly, nothing;
And I'd come back with: Not bad, thanks, and youl

H someone shouts a word at me, I'm mad for understanding;
H another says nothing: could it be out of pity?...
Always, like a rebus, I struggle to catch
A word catercorner ... No-- They left me out!

Or-reverse of the coin-some officious stuHed shirt,
His lower lip wagging as though he were grazing,
Fancies himself conversing . • . And I, gnawing within,
keep still:
A grinning idiot-looking intelligent!

-Gray woolen cap pulled down over my soull
And-the donkey's kick ... Giddyap! -A good lady,
Old Lemonade Peddler, and of Passion, tool
Might come up to drool her sanctimonious sympathy
In my Eustacian tube-full blast, like a horn-
And I not even able to step on her corn!

-Silly as a virgin, aloof as a leper,
I'm there, but absent ... Is he a dunce, they want to know,
A muzzled poet, or just a crab? . . .
A shrug of the shoulders, and that means: Deaf.

-Frenzied torment of an acoustic Tantalusl
I see words Hying I cannot snatch;
Impotent :flycatcher, eaten by a mosquito,
Target-head with free pot shots for all!

O heavenly music: to hear a sea shell
Grate on plaster! A razor, a knife
Scrape in a cork! A couplet on the stage!
A live bone being sawn! A gentleman! A rondeau!

-Nothing- I babble to myself ... Words I toss to the
air
Off the cuff, not knowing if I speak Hindu,
Or perhaps duck talk, like the clarinet
Of a blockhead blindman mistaking the stops.

Go then, tipsy pendulum gone loose in my head!
Beat np this floe tom-tom, cracked tinny pianola
That renders a woman's voice a doorbell,
A cuckoo! ... Sometimes: a buzzing gnat ...

-Lie down, my heart, and beat your wing no more.
In the dark-lantern let us snuff the candle out,
And all that once vibrated there-I know no longer where-
Dungeon where they come to draw the bolt across the door.

-Be mute for me, pensive Idol.
Both of us, for each other's sake, forgetting to speak,
Say not a word to me: nothing will I answer...
And nothing then can mar our understanding.

Silence is golden (St. John Chrysostom).