‘The Animal That Drank Up Sound’

 The poet William Stafford told about an animal that needed sound. Instead of making some, he took it away. No more rustling leaves. No more splash of fish. And when he had drunk in all the sound, he began to starve.

After he died a cricket emerged and chirped —

 

                        and back like a river

            from that one act flowed the kind of world we know,

            first whisperings, then moves in the grass and leaves;

the water splashed, and the big night bird screamed.

 

Sometimes the moon, cold, waits for the animal to return.

 

            But somewhere the cricket waits.

            It listens now, and practices at night.

 

This started as a story around a campfire and grew into a children’s book. The adult version — this poem — has different meanings for different people.

At a reading in Iran, people told Stafford they could not believe the poem about state censorship had been published. People there were sure they knew what the poem was about, although the idea that the poem was about state censorship had not occurred to the poet.

Since I first read the poem, it’s taken on a new meaning. 

• Source and notes: William Stafford, The Way It Is; Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, 1998, pp. 118-19. 

I’m marking a birthday. Stafford was born on Jan. 17, 2014, in Hutchinson, Kansas. He and one of his sons, the poet Kim Stafford, are mentioned often in this collection of notes.