A light, just now living, that has
never been, in its mortal life, turned off—

ON, it has never been, in its mortal
life, not ON,—

…when you ask what it is like

suddenly for what was always there
not to be there

for what had to be endured by those before you
to have to be endured now by you

LIKE, what in the world are such pervasive
vanishings LIKE,—

…no words it knows apply, and it is silent.

Silent. This is “the eternal silence of the dead.”

Frank Bidart, “Why the Dead Cannot Answer”, in Against Silence