from Songs of the Earth
by Ronald Johnson

"Thoreau, as he walked year after year the Concord woods, was the first to record the musics of silence... These songs are listening, as poems must listen and sing simultaneously. They are a progression of hearings of Mahler's 'Song of the Earth' on records, in concert and in my head." (Ronald Johnson)

Source: To Do As Adam Did, selected poems of Ronald Johnson, edited by Peter O'Leary; Talisman House, Jersey City, New Yersey, 2000.

Institute for Broken and Reduced Languages