In Silence
Be still.
Listen to the
stones of the wall.
Be silent, they try
To speak your
Name.
Listen
To the
living walls.
Who are you?
Who
Are you? Whose
Silence are
you?
Who (be quiet)
Are you
(as these stones
Are quiet). Do not
Think of what you are
Still less
of
What you may one day be.
Rather
Be what you are (but who?) be
The
unthinkable one
You do not know.
O be still, while
You are
still alive,
And all things live around you
Speaking (I do not hear)
To
your own being,
Speaking by the Unknown
That is in you and in
themselves.
“I will try, like them
To
be my own silence:
And this is difficult. The whole
World is secretly on
fire. The stones
Burn, even the stones
They burn me. How can a man be
still or
Listen to all things burning? How can he dare
To sit with
them
When all their silence
Is on fire?”
~ Thomas Merton
~
(The Strange Islands: Poems by
Thomas Merton)
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