513: a complaint, and 514: its answer

About to read, and so the hammers start

to hammering a din throughout my ears—

their ruckus ghostly, but real for its part

in making quiet reading drown in tears.

Only the one who knows, knows what I mean:

the static crashing, clanging chorus croon

of desperation when you try to glean

some peace upon a quiet afternoon.

For who will know what I have read? Not one.

No ear will hear what I hold dear today.

These thoughts die with the setting of the Sun,

and only I remember what they say.

What would be heard in quiet if it could—

but solitude makes deaf more than it should.

~

But author! I forgot to think of you!

If no-one hears my thoughts, perhaps you will.

I’ll write the questions that your writing grew,

and read on, ‘til your own thoughts they fulfil.

No book escapes its own conversation.

You say not what you wish nobody hears.

I, hearer, read with rapt revelation,

and ask: speak on, o’er few or many years.

That’s it indeed. To read is not alone—

one confidant knows every thought you bear.

One friend you always have with any tome:

where’er you read, there is the writer there.

Dear Jove! Give reader-guest and author-host

xenia of a kind that you would boast.