Silences

A cat walks out on velvet feet, an owl wings like a ghost,
A moonbeam slants through sleeping streets, mist drifts in from the coast,
The night is here an hour before you note that evening leaves,
But still more silently than these walk out the master thieves

You mark them in the noontide, underneath the sun:
Their steps are long and cocksure; their words before them run;
Their voices carry loudly, their gestures wide and brash--
But you will not see them nighttimes when they go to earn their cash.

Prayers go up to Heaven, smoke goes to the sky,
The moon climbs up the starfield, and moths to her do fly,
Ivy climbs up buildingsides with sure and clinging leaves;
But nothing climbs more surely than do the master thieves.

You see them in the marketplaces, wearing gold that shines,
You mark them in the tavern rooms, drinking fine red wines,
Gaudy as a pheasant cock, noisy as a lark--
But you will not see nor hear them when they go out after dark.

One year to train a falcon; two for a hunting hound;
Four to train a riding horse, six for the battle round;
Eight years to train a healer; ten to shape a priest's belief:
Twice ten the very least it takes to make a master thief.

You see them in the streets that run inside the Honeycomb,
Chaffing with their friends as men who take their ease at home:
Mark the way the Guardsmen watch, who dare not make a move--
You can't arrest a man if there is nothing you can prove!

Slipping through the darkness, silent as a thought,
Like the shadows pooling where the moon is not,
If you're hearing nothing, if you think your eye deceives:
There, where nothing passed you by -- there went the master thieves!