I Know a Silent Movie Star
I know a silent movie star named Jane.
She speaks without moving her lips.
She once starred in a film called Shadow Train.
Her memoir is full of lies.
She's perfectly honest about this.
Such is life as we know it
and if you don't like it just turn the page
until you arrive at the one that feels right
since you can always find another
on some distant sister world
I was told many times as a child.
I love Jane because of her silence
which I've tried unsuccessfully to emulate
throughout my adult life.
Lately it's become a bit harder for me
to walk and breathe and sleep. We all love Jane
because of her unbridgeable distance
like that far-off sister planet
on which life can barely be imagined.
She is nonetheless a star not a planet.
She retains her cool and distant glow
even as the superstorms here
grow ever more violent
and the surging tides and flames
display themselves to those many miles above
circling and dreaming their circular dreams
in endless earth orbit.
I know a silent movie star named Jane
though that of course is not her actual name
only that of the distant star
she once suddenly became.
Copyright Credit: Michael Palmer, "I Know a Silent Movie Star" from Little Elegies for Sister Satan. Copyright © 2021 by Michael Palmer. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation.
Source: Little Elegies for Sister Satan (New Directions Publishing Corporation, 2021)