Keeping Still

Pablo Neruda was a Chilean poet and diplomat of the 20th century. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971. He wrote of many topics in his lifetime. I’ve learned, often in green ink, as a symbol of desire and hope.

I like this, below, on stillness because it is one of the things I most seek. Stillness, whether in self, with others, or as society, is largely overlooked in a culture that has grown to revere movement and action in such a way that the movement and action of stillness, the subtle, the delicately nuanced, has become, sadly, invisible.

If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.

 

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