When Laurens van der Post one night 
         In the Kalahari Desert told the Bushmen 
                  He couldn't hear the stars 
Singing, they didn't believe him. They looked at him, 
         half-smiling. They examined his face 
                  To see whether he was joking 
Or deceiving them. Then two of those small men 
         Who plant nothing, who have almost 
                  Nothing to hunt, who live 
On almost nothing and with no one 
         But themselves, led him away 
                   From the crackling thorn-scrub fire 
And stood with him under the night sky 
         And listened. One of them whispered, 
                   Do you not hear them now? 
And van der Post listened, not wanting 
         To disbelieve, but had to answer, 
                   No. They walked him slowly 
Like a sick man to the small dim 
         Circle of firelight and told him 
                   They were terribly sorry, 
And he felt even sorrier 
         For himself and blamed his ancestors 
                   For their strange loss of hearing, 
Which was his loss now. On some clear night 
         When nearby houses have turned off their visions, 
                   When the traffic dwindles, when through streets 
Are between sirens and the jets overhead 
         Are between crossings, when the wind 
                   Is hanging fire in the fir trees, 
And the long-eared owl in the neighboring grove 
         Between calls is regarding his own darkness, 
                   I look at the stars again as I first did 
To school myself in the names of constellations 
         And remember my first sense of their terrible distance, 
                   I can still hear what I thought 
At the edge of silence were the inside jokes 
         Of my heartbeat, my arterial traffic, 
                  The C above high C of my inner ear, myself 
Tunelessly humming, but now I know what they are: 
         My fair share of the music of the spheres 
                   And clusters of ripening stars, 
Of the songs from the throats of the old gods 
         Still tending ever tone-deaf creatures 
                 Through their exiles in the desert.