Sonnet on Turning a Radio Dial
by Anderson M. Scruggs (1897-1955)
They are the foes of silence and of time,
These voices from the fringes of the earth,
Thronging the streams of air with stave and rhyme,
Charging the clouds with ribaldry and mirth.
Out of the futile dark the sounds arise,
Whistling their way from cities, strange and far,
Cleaving tumultuous pathways down the skies
Long held inviolate for moon and star.
O little valiant voices of the dust,
Lifting your dreams like torches in the night —
Sing on against that hour when time shall thrust
A lean forefinger to put out your light,
And all the centuried silence of the loam
Like some great tidal wave comes thundering home.