Silences

Out of a quiet mood of night
come women’s voices, so far
away that they are the white
figures at the other side
of that dark lake in the picture
that hung in my hall as a
child. Now that I think
of it I know that they
were not people but sails
perhaps? Or rays of light
the painter squeezed through
leaves of the giant trees,
but in my mind they must remain
people, lost in the swift
evening that bludgeoned them
and drove them to the little
light remaining in the shimmer
remaining on water, and what
were they speaking of, and
what were their names, and now
though I hear their voices in
the night all I can tell for
sure is that they are women’s
voices, soft and white, wrapped
in white vowels floating above
the white gowns that cover
their limbs, lost in the rushing
darkness of the summer evening.