Silent Chaos

after Vera Iliatova’s ‘Reconciliations’ (2014)

What do you think when you see people running? — Sometimes
it’s just chaos, sometimes the other way round — happiness,
excitement to just discuss something unsaid.

Sometimes things end in whispers, sometimes it’s a deluge of
rain — but who knows whether from a still face, with
surety; sometimes there are voices that even the

trees cannot hear. Some branches lay still while their leaves
suffocate in water; a plant whose name I don’t recall but
remember an illustration of which from a post-

card, its petals lap some water from a pool where a girl
stands in a way that says she awaits someone, or quite
the end of chaos — hands held in desperate

posture. What would you say when you looked at her from this
distance? — She seems to me one of the group, having
submitted to her inability of running after

forest-fires — there’s a silence a lip can’t tell from another:
the acknowledgement of inevitability of death after a
séance; maybe that’s why the chaos. All

this running. But what when excitement sulls? The end
is always the same, it all ends in silence — silence,
an unacknowledged guest — some say, peace.

Header photograph © J. Bish.