Conversation in the Face of Silence: Joseph Brodsky

Silence is the future of the days
that roll toward speech, with all we emphasize
in it, as, in our greetings, silence pays
respect to unavoidable goodbyes.
Silence is the future of the words
whose vowels have gobbled up internally
the stuff of things, things with terror towards
their corners; a wave that cloaks eternity.
Silence is the future of our love;
a space, not an impediment, a space
depriving love's blood-throbbed falsetto of
its echo, of its natural response.
Silence is the present for men
who lived before us. And, procuress-like,
silence gathers all together in
itself, admitted by the speech-filled present. Life
is but a conversation in the face
of silence.

Joseph Brodsky, "Gorbunov and Gorchakov" - trans. Harry Thomas and Joseph Brodsky, revised and edited by Ann Kjellberg in Collected Poems in English