Sun at the peak in the zenith, tropical heat and from far away comes an exhausted pilgrim looking for shade. From a distance, he sees a huge leafy mango tree and settles under it. As everything in nature is presented in abundance, he noticed that the tree was full of fruits and flowers and a real racket of flying insects humming its wings: the bee sucking the honey, butterflies rustling the wings, ants looking for the resins that exuded from the logs, crickets nibbling at the old leaves full of fungi, and cicadas, maybe thousands of them, with their deafening singing that come out of a kind of speaker with vibrating membranes on their abdomens. For him, the ideal shade rest! Rest, but no silence.
After a few minutes, unable to take a restful nap, he faces a noisy cicada in despair looking for a lover to mate and shoots him a question ...
- Cri, crii, criii, criiii, criiiii ...
- Always the same song, cicada? Always the same? … When will you end this fast-paced squeak? ... When will you invent a different note in your singing? … When will you discover something less monotonous? …
- What do you say, O man? Monotone my singing? And yours? …
- Mine?
- Yes, your song, of all days, of all years, of all centuries?
- What song, cicada? …
- "My love ... My love" ... many times I have seen many couples under the shade of this tree dying of love, and I never heard them say anything else. I didn't even know that another melody was in your language. "My love," he says. "My love", she answers - and nothing more ...
- It's true, cicada, but you should know that we ...
- Well, you should also know that we cicadas do the same thing. I call my partner, from the other tree, and tell her that I love her - and she answers from there that she loves me and will come to visit me ...
Listen, O man! Before you came here, other pairs of lovers were sitting in the shade of this tree and its ascendants - and they never said anything other than My love ... My love ... This mango tree told me that in very remote times, I had been sitting in the shade of their ancestors a very happy couple, that God had created ...
- And what did this couple that had left the hands of God say?
- The same as you say: My love ... My love ... And I think it's right. When the heart speaks, not much is needed. Just one. And when the heart speaks very loud, silence is enough for everything ...
We, the cicadas, sing when we are far from each other - and keep silent when we are close ... You men talk even when you are together. It seems that we love more than you do because our silence is better ...
- What a strange philosophy, O cicada! ... but, anyway, you are partly right ... Love, when vast and deep, only needs one string, a single harp, to say everything it feels. And even this single string and this simple harp can end in reticence and silence when love reaches its zenith …
- Do you know, O man, why the sun does not sing? Why do flowers live quietly? Why is the blue of the sky mute? …
- Why would it be cicada?
- It's because they love so intensely that any word would say less than the silence says ...
- What do they love?
- I do not know. But they love something very lovable and that does not allow them to speak, so as not to disturb the symphony of love ... because there is an invisible Being above us that makes us inebriated with love. We sing and keep quiet for the love of Him ...
And the cicada sang, sang, sang ...
His monotonous singing ...
His great poetry ...
In the midst of immense silence,
The silence of love ...
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