What is changed by making marks,
or by holding the ink inside?
I am not hungry.
I am not poor.
It is older than choice—
this returning to paper,
known or unknown.
It is my climate.
But sometimes, from a distant city,
another keeper of silence
will signal through the noise
and repeat the old, necessary question:
What quiet engine in the chest
manufactures, without market or need,
this surplus of untranslated sound?