The Wall Poem by Jose F Rosado

Who are you there, on the other side?
At times I hear your faint scratching,
your movements across the thin wall.

For a long time
I thought you no longer lived there.
One day, long ago,
I just stopped hearing your noises.

You were louder in the old days.
The stomping of your feet
as you moved across the floor
resounded through my room.
I knew you were there.

You used to scream back then –
sometimes in anger,
sometimes in warning –
always in passion.

Even over the cacophony
of your many visitors
your voice always stood out –
booming across the wall
in supreme confidence…
as if you had all the answers.

Your voice called to me
and I would sit countless hours,
my ear pressed against our paper-thin wall,
hoping to understand your strange language,
to gain your knowledge,
your largeness,
your noise.

That was many years ago,
when I was convinced
there were paths and destinations,
and I was positive
your language was learnable,
and I would learn to speak it,
and understand it,
and one day my room would be full of visitors,
and noise,
and my voice would boom above all others
with the serene loudness
that brought the clamor to their lips
and peace to my heart.


But one day the sounds subsided.
Maybe you became quieter.
Maybe my ears grew deaf
to your particular noise.
Maybe the view out the window
became more interesting,
more germane,
than the sounds across the wall.

The colors thrilled me –
and as I stared at them in hopeful wonder,
I saw patterns in the abstract
and believed
I could see the solid in the swirl,
the material in the mist,
the concrete in the colors.

I didn’t hear your noises then.
I thought you had left.
Sometimes, I forgot you had even been there.
Sometimes… I thought you never had.
My voice now boomed in my ears.
I had no time
for listening to walls.

Fascinated,
I saw the swirls, and colors and mists
gel into an image of perfect clarity.
The answers lay before me.
Back then, I would rather choose
a moment of perfect vision
than an eternity of ambiguity.

In unblinking wonder I stared,
congratulating myself
for my wisdom and fortune…


Until a wind blew
tiny specs of dust into my eyes,
and I blinked,
and teared,
and looked up
and saw again the swirling mists of colors,
and my chest pressed into my heart,
and I understood the illusion.

It has been very quiet since then.
I no longer hear my booming voice -
only anxious gasps
and disappointed sighs.

Even in the humming silence,
I heard no sounds across the wall.

But one day,
I thought I heard something –
the soft swishing sound of your sole across the floor,
your fingers scratching at your temple,
pages turning in a book.

Vaguely, I remembered the noise of years ago –
the confidence and certainty they contained,
the promises I heard in them.

It is different now.
The noises are quiet,
more tentative – as if you were listening to me.

Who are you there, on the other side?
Why are you so familiar
and yet so different than before?
What happened
to your gilded days of glory
and absolute certainty?
Are you also learning, as I did?
Do you now know
that wisdom means living
with vagueness and doubt?
That peace comes from both,
caring and chaos?


I know who you are now – God,
and you are as confused as I am,
and you seek, just as I do –
and you can be as lonely as I.

The wall between us is thin.
Are we ever to meet each other?
If you need me,
will you ever call out?

Or are we to spend eternity,
two frightened men,
our ears pressed against each other,
listening through a paper-thin wall?

(November 2003)