Nothing To Say

Nothing to Say

By Paul Hostovsky

He had nothing to say, he said,

adding only that saying so

was in itself finally beautiful and true.

That was his message. It was

something no one else had ever said

quite the way he was saying it.

Many thought they heard a quiet

sort of unexceptional wisdom in it

and nodded their heads in agreement,

nodded their heads to the music of it-

which wasn’t an easy music per se,

not the kind you’d get up and dance to,

or beat a drum to, or hum to yourself

in an abstracted sort of way. But it grew

louder. So when his enemies and detractors

tried to silence him, they couldn’t silence him.

Because he had nothing to say.

They could only scratch their heads and listen.