Silence! I am learning to know the silence of a Tahitian night.
In this silence I hear nothing except the beating of my heart.
But the rays of the moon play through the bamboo reeds, standing equidistant from each other before my hut,
and reach even to my bed. And these regular intervals of light suggest a musical instrument to me--the
reed-pipe of the ancients, which was familiar to the Maori, and is called vivo by them. The moon and the
bamboo reeds made it assume an exaggerated form--an instrument that remained silent throughout the day,
but that at night by grace of the moon calls forth in the memory of the dreamer well-loved melodies. Under
this music I fell asleep.
Between me and the sky there was nothing except the high frail roof of pandanus leaves, where the lizards
have their nests.
I am far, far away from the prisons that European houses are.
A Maori hut does not separate man from life, from space, from the infinite...
In this silence I hear nothing except the beating of my heart.
But the rays of the moon play through the bamboo reeds, standing equidistant from each other before my hut,
and reach even to my bed. And these regular intervals of light suggest a musical instrument to me--the
reed-pipe of the ancients, which was familiar to the Maori, and is called vivo by them. The moon and the
bamboo reeds made it assume an exaggerated form--an instrument that remained silent throughout the day,
but that at night by grace of the moon calls forth in the memory of the dreamer well-loved melodies. Under
this music I fell asleep.
Between me and the sky there was nothing except the high frail roof of pandanus leaves, where the lizards
have their nests.
I am far, far away from the prisons that European houses are.
A Maori hut does not separate man from life, from space, from the infinite...
