The whole night world fell quiet, from North to South. Even the giant sequoias, old as they were, with as much as they'd seen and remembered, and with the wind for company, were still.
As the earth turned and the night began to catch up with the day before, the silence and the sadness grew. The herons wading in the marshes of China made no comment. The green tree frog in the woods of Australia said not a word. The great song of earth, unbroken for all time, began to die out, and the only sound left was the rush of the wind.
The people on the night side gradually became aware of the silence as the night came on. They had not heard the loons call across the lake in northern Ontario. The deafening sizzle of crickets and frogs in southern Mississippi was gone. No coyote in Mexico, not even the youngest, so much as barked. No walrus anywhere in the world coughed. The people, too, fell silent, feeling the strangeness and wondering at it.
Finally the silence reached around the world to where it had begun. The wails of the youngest boy-child in Senegal broke off abruptly in his surprise. The wind sighed among the palm trees, trying to get them to speak, but they could not. The weight of the whole world's pain was too great.
After a time which was neither long nor short, the wind tired of being the only one with anything to say and fell silent. The surf without the wind was a mere whisper. Everything, everyone, everywhere was still.
The only one still able to speak was the Spirit of God, because silence is the Spirit's voice. The whole world waited in stillness for that voice. "What is it?" cried the Spirit of God, and because everything else was completely quiet, even the silent voice of God in the secret heart of the world sounded loud. "Why has your song died out?"
No one felt like answering; most couldn't if they had tried. After another time, which was probably longer than shorter, a tiny spotted owl in a forest on the shores of the Pacific replied, "There is no room on the earth for me." A giant sequoia, nearly as old as time itself, rumbled agreement. The wolf pup yipped, "It's true. The people are killing us in our dens." The whale calf pulsed its song halfway across the ocean, "There's no room for me and no food." "Nor me," called the heron; "nor me," barked the seal; "nor me," piped the tree frog; "nor me," whispered the newest butterfly. "The people are killing us; there is no longer any room for us; we are not wanted." The chorus was deafening for a time, although each creature spoke only once, from deep sadness, and then the world was silent again.
Then an Aymara boy in Bolivia spoke up. "There is no room for me, either." An Arab girl from Palestine could only sob, but everyone knew there was no room for her. A tiny refugee boy from Sudan stuttered, "They killed my mother and my father and all my brothers and sisters. There is no room for me; no one wants me." A young girl in Bosnia said, "He is right. We are definitely not wanted." A young boy in Washington, D.C., who had been darting his bike in and out of traffic, said, "It's true. No one wants me." An old man in a homeless shelter in Chicago agreed. "For sure, they don't want me." A young maquiladora worker in Honduras sighed, "They only want me for the work I can do while I am young. Then they will throw me away. There is no room on earth for a life for me." Again a chorus loud as thunder rose and died away as each person spoke of his or her pain.
After a time which was definitely shorter than longer, all was still once more. The Spirit of God breathed just one word, a question. "Well?" To those listening in the silence, that breath seemed louder than any sound ever heard before, louder even than the Creation shout, "It is good!" But though perhaps it was the loudest anyone had ever heard, it was not a joyful sound.
The silence at last was broken by the Aymara boy. "I will leave room for you," he said to the butterfly. "I will not let them cut down your trees." A young Japanese girl cried to the whale calf, "I will leave you room. I will not let them hunt you again." An Eskimo boy in Canada said to the wolf pup, "I will leave room for you. No one will be allowed to kill you." A Jewish boy in Israel said to the Arab girl, "Don't cry. I will make room for you. I will make them stop the killing." A Senegalese girl said to the Sudanese child, "My family will make room for you. The killing must stop."
An old, old woman with skin the color of strong tea said to the boy on the bike, "We do not have time to leave this to the children alone. All of us must do what we can. I will make room for you. I want you to live." A grandmother in Chicago said to the homeless man, "I will give you a place to stay." A Korean man in a business suit agreed. He spoke to the girl in Honduras, saying, "I will make room for you. No one will enslave you and take away your children." This last chorus was softer than the others, because not everyone spoke. But when each had said his or her say, the Spirit of God spoke into the resulting hush a final time, saying, "Each of you must sing your song. It is I who want to hear you sing the song I gave you at Creation."
The owlet hooted and the wolf howled. The whale spouted, the crickets rasped, birds everywhere called to each other and the trees rustled their leaves. The surf pounded and every last child on the earth, even the infants, began to sing. As they sang, they remembered their promises, and though they made room for the songs of all, they each sang more loudly. The song of the earth had begun again.
The End
or maybe
The Beginning?
copyright 1998 by Susanne Coalson Donoghue
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