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The Salve Regina in the dark

At Compline we turn the lights down until there is only the one lamp by the icon of Our Lady. Then the Salve Regina, from memory, because nobody can see the book anyway. Brother Anselm is eighty-three and sings a quarter-tone flat. For my first month I found it maddening. Now I listen for him. If he isn't there, something is wrong. After the last note comes the Great Silence, until morning. No talking in the corridors, just shoes on stone and the bell. I'm learning that the silence is not an absence of prayer. It is where the prayer goes to finish itself.