Solitude and Hope: Y'all Come Visit!

The mountains daily speech is silence
Profound as the Great Silence
between the last Office and the first
Uninterrupted as the silence God maintains
throughout the layered centuries
All the mountain's moods,
frank or evasive,
its whiteness, its blueness,
are shown to sight alone
Yet it is known
that fire seethes in its depths
and will surely rise one day, breaking open
the mute imperturbable summit. Will the roar of eruption be
the mountains own repressed voice,
or that of the fire? Does the mountain
harbor a demon distinct from itself?

Denise Levertov, 1997.