when words do not suffice

It is a poetic sort of evening, the kind that feels fragile and expansive, all at once. The kind that only music can translate, from words into lyrics into melodious phrases. I think of the forest, that sheltering peace, as I listen to the summer songs of the nighttime insects and the rattling purr of my (continually) contented cat. A song, but no music:

Point out into the midnight haze.
In which direction? Well, in either.
What matters is not what life has,
but just one's faith in what should be there.

Point your sharp finger in the dark:
there, like an alto left to harden
in highest pitch, should be a star;
and if it isn't up there, pardon

long similes, their worn supply;
like roosters that have missed their hour,
the mind, diminished badly by
our parting, simply tries to soar.

Faith in the ideal, in what should be. Life contained in life, hurdling toward some higher goal. Yet how words fail to comprehend such things!

"Suddenly he realized that all his life he had done nothing but talk, write, lecture, concoct sentences, search for formulations and amend them, so in the end no words were precise, their meanings were obliterated, their content lost, they turned into trash, chaff, dust, sand...and what he yearned for at that moment, vaguely but with all his might, was unbounded music." (Kundera)

Even my cat knows to take time to smell the flowers...