The words of the prophets
Are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls
And whispered in the sounds of silence.

These lines come from “The Sound of Silence,” written by Paul Simon in the mid-1960s and first released by Simon & Garfunkel on the album *Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M.* (1964). The song was composed in a period of anxiety about modern mass communication—television, advertising, and the sense that public “conversation” was becoming louder yet less meaningful. The imagery of “subway walls” and “tenement halls” evokes urban America, where anonymous crowds and poverty sit alongside ubiquitous media. In the song’s closing vision, prophetic truth is not delivered from pulpits or institutions but appears as graffiti-like warnings in everyday, overlooked places.

The couplet reframes “prophets” as voices that speak uncomfortable truths about society’s spiritual and communicative emptiness. By placing their “words” on subway and tenement walls, the lyric suggests that genuine insight emerges from the margins—public spaces, the poor, the anonymous—rather than from official authorities. The phrase implies both literal graffiti and metaphorical writing: the city itself becomes a text of warnings and testimonies. The final line, “whispered in the sounds of silence,” underscores the paradox that the most important messages are quiet, ignored, or drowned out by noise. The passage functions as a bleak epiphany: modern life produces signs of truth everywhere, yet people fail to listen.

“The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls.”
“And whispered in the sounds of silence.”