By the grace You grant me of silence without loneliness, give me the right to plead, to clamor, for all who are imprisoned in a loneliness without silence!
Two hundred years ago Issa heard the morning birds
singing sutras to this suffering world.
I heard them too, this morning, which must mean,
since we will always have a suffering world,
we must also always have a song.
~ David Budbill, "What Issa Heard" in MOMENT TO MOMENT
