Cadmus the warrior left his own land in the fullness of manhood searching for a blessed golden land to rest his spirit in forever and for a god who would keep silent for his thoughts to strike echoes.  A giant image came and spread its shadow across his path.  Cadmus looked up and found his sun-shouldered god gazing calm-faced in green meadows and Cadmus knelt and worshipped.  Cadmus the warrior took a wife and raised a family beneath the image’s knees and spent his days in calmness, pouring psalms and stirring eloquences into his god’s ears.  He brought up his sons with voices of worship and died at the feet of his cherished image.  The sons lived and soon were shown by a new-rising sun that the silence of the image came not from the attention of a god but from the deafness of cold, mindless stone.  The sun dried the grass and burned the sand, the sons were taken from their desert home and given to another king because of the warrior’s blindness.  Cadmus was my father, too.  I am his only daughter, and I am mute.  I wait with my brothers in exile suffering for our father’s pagan ways.  Bring me back from Chaldea, take me silent to the silent home I only remember and cannot sense.  I seek no blessed land, no milk and honey, nectar or ambrosia.  The land I will live in need be no paradise as long as it is my own.  I ask only sleep at day’s end.  The prophet will take my stillness and no psalms will be offered at an image’s feet.  My thanks will be silence and will be given to answer silence.  The only sounds that I will hear will enter from behind my ears: the memories of crashing swords, cries of horror and anguish, Cadmus’s songs turned to screams.  My son will walk in white robes and speak of a promise of the sun’s forgetfulness.  The sands will cool and we will rest as the horrors of his uncles become stories in fireside shadows to enthrall the children and quiet them for peaceful sleep.  The silence of forgotten sounds will be my god, a well-tilled garden my paradise, the weeds my only search as forever fades beneath the stars hanging over Cadmus’s grave.