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Silent Film

By Kurt Brown Kurt Brown

Doors opened and shut,

the director shouted orders

through a bullhorn,

or babbled just

out of the frame.

A carpenter hammered flats nearby

for the next production.

All of this, and more,

while the actors blocked it out,

already living

in that small square of light

where silence reigned

like a tiny theatre for the deaf.

Now, almost a century later,

it's peaceful, far

from the center of action,

the last voice on the street

reduced to a whisper,

then gone.

Not even birdsong

as evening's opening credits

begin to roll.

Only the film,

shimmering out of a disc

thinner than sound,

characters moving

like fish in their gray element—

less than fish—

not a hiss, not a bubble,

not even a cry

from that dim world of silence

doubled by time.

Source: Poetry (June 2002).

Biography

Poet and editor Kurt Brown was born in Brooklyn, New York, and grew up on Long Island and in Connecticut. He is the author of the poetry collections Return of the Prodigals (1999), More Things in Heaven and Earth (2002), Fables from the Ark (2004), Future Ship (2007), No Other Paradise (2010), and Time-Bound (2012). With his wife, the poet Laure-Anne Bosselaar, Brown translated The Plural of Happiness: Selected Poems of Herman . . .

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