To Read Quietly

The next category in Best-Loved Poems is "Poems to be Read Quietly" and as with the previous category I am a bit baffled as to what their choices have in common or why they should be read quietly, rather than aloud. Judge for yourself. They include Edward Thomas's Adlestrop, Shelley's Ozymandias, Blake's To See the World in a Grain of Sand and Keats Ode To A Nightingale.
Nevertheless, a project is a project, so here is my take on "Poems to be Read Quietly", an attempt at evoking a particular quiet moment from my travels.

A standard exercise in writing groups and on courses is to take the first line of another, preferably famous, work and to use it as a springboard for your own ideas. This was what was done in a writing group I attended a couple of weeks ago. From the selection of first lines offered I chose "Rising early and walking in the garden" from a poem by Robert Graves.

Malawi Morning

Rising early and walking in the garden,
driven to unaccustomed insomniac meandering
by the orchestra of snoring in the dormitory,
I watched an unfamiliar sun rise above an unfamiliar horizon.
It lifted itself through an arc of perfect sky;
Unglued itself from the jagged mountain line;
Dragged itself inch by careful inch until it was free of the ground;
Balanced on a cushion of blue sky.

Rising early and walking in the garden,
awake and alone, the only human figure in the landscape,
as daybreak bled colour into the monochrome traces of night.
I listened to unfamiliar birds sing their unfamiliar morning hymns.
Some sang with booming, echoing, joyous whoops.
Some sang with cascading, waterfalls of notes.
Some sang with screeches, squawks or witches cackles:
And then, suddenly, there was silence.

Rising early and walking in the garden,
I waited, as Africa awoke.