Twenty Poems about Silence (4 of 4) – Analysis and Commentary

Third post in the series:

https://poetryofgonzalinhodacosta.blogspot.com/2018/11/twenty-poems-about-silence-3-of-4.html

This last set of poems in the series I found surprising, exceptional, and memorable, by authors who are unknowns, practically.

SILENCE by Melinda Nugent

Silence is golden

I once heard it said

How often these words

ring thru my head

I miss the words

that trickle off tongues

and giggles and laughs

that with childhood come

the sounds of the birds

that float thru the air

I would cross the street

without a care

How often I feel

so sorry inside

for the part of my world

that so quietly died

what I wouldn't give

to hear one more song

If silence is golden

why do I long?

Sign language interpreter

This poem, originally published on the Internet on March 10, 2009, is no longer available. Despite my best efforts, I have not been able to locate or contact the author.

Playing on a well-thumbed proverb, the poem is poignant, clever, winning. Best of all is the surprise ending—the speaker is deaf.

I HAD A SUDDEN SCRUPLE by Ralph Wright, O.S.B.

I had a

sudden scruple

when writing

this poem

that what

I was saying

was worth

less

than silence

so I stopped.

Saint Benedict (2011) by David Holgate
Saint Giles Church, Norwich, UK

This poem dated May 1, 2001 was originally published on the St. Louis Abbey, Missouri, USA website.

See: https://www.stlouisabbey.org/words-for-the-journey/i-had-a-sudden-scruple

This poem is written by a Benedictine monk whose religious profession commits him to nurturing silence. When in the poem he opts for silence over speech, he implicitly invokes the spirit of his Rule, calling forth its organic meanings. This aspect of the poem makes it particularly curious.

“St. Benedict understood that silence is an essential element of monastic life. He outlined this throughout his Rule, but most especially in chapter six. Modern monks like to point out that first word in the Rule is to ‘Listen’, which can’t be done while talking! God gave us two ears and one mouth, so we should use them in that order. This emphasis on silence is so that we can learn to listen to God more acutely. God speaks to us in the Bible, but also in the depths of our heart and, as we begin to tune into him, we learn to be attentive to his presence in others.

“This kind of sensitivity and awareness makes it easier to pray at all times. So a monk seeks to practice a considerable degree of silence and recollection. In Benedictine life, there are times of silence (especially during the night) and there are places, such as a monk’s cell (his room), the library, the reading room, the cloister and the church, where he will be able to discover the solitude which is typical of monastic life.

“…a monk lives off silence, and a sign of a vocation to the monastic life is the ability to take to it and create it. The earliest monks went into the desert so that their lives could be dominated by this sense of God. In the Bible, the desert is the place where God met his people and made them his own. It is also the place where Christ was tempted, and a monk has to face up to everything in himself which would try to stand in the place where God belongs. People may sometimes feel lonely and for them silence is harsh, but instead of running away, a monk tries to find the silent place in his heart where he can find God. There is a world of difference between loneliness and solitude with God.

“Silence also helps build up a healthy community life in the monastery. What binds us together as a human fellowship is the knowledge that we are each trying to answer to God’s call to seek Him. Listening to each other helps us understand and support each other. It is a way of learning reverence for God’s presence in every other human being.

“…As St. Benedict wrote in chapter 42, we are called to strive for silence; as he wrote in chapter 4, we are called to have a love for silence; it’s incredibly healthy and spiritually beneficial! Most importantly, St. Benedict wrote that it is in this ‘School of the Lord’s Service’ that we are called to ‘Listen’ and grow closer to God.”

—Subiaco Abbey, Arkansas, USA

See: https://countrymonks.org/silence

AN AUTUMN STILLNESS by Robert K. Johnson

is nothing like the ones

that lumber into a week

in July, squat—stolid

as an invisible tank—

and weigh down the air with a heat

so heavy even the bees

linger on the nearest petals,

too exhausted to fly.

An autumn stillness comes

as a quick surprise. The breeze

suddenly turns quiet

while the trees’ fluttering leaves

lock in place and the leaves

that floated down on lawns—

as if on signal—stop tumbling

over the tops of the grass.

The stillness holds you, too,

although you know it soon

will break and re-enter time’s flow,

forcing you to do the same.

Autumn country barn

This poem was originally published in Poetry Porch (2015). 

See: http://www.poetryporch.com/johnsonone15.html

Dazzling, the way this poem transfixes in time an instant of furtive stillness. All of us have probably experienced a similar moment of unreality when the universe is at once petrified. In the poem, this moment occurs in fall, when the breeze vanishes in a wink and the tumbling leaves freeze. The vision contrasts with our experience of lumbering summer slowing making its way forward.

MINISTRY OF SNOW by Abigail Carroll

Listen: someone

is scissoring the clouds, snipping

the weather

into a dazzling squall of tiny white

vowels. The hills

have become an undulating clause,

contoured

by the going under of the light,

the distant hoo

of an owl’s lonely psalm. What

you once loved

about a dress—the delicate grammar

of its swoosh— 

you have come to love about the snow:

the way

the pointed ice-ferns lisp the air,

rewrite

the yard into a stark, unrippled

fiction,

the forest into a thousand intertwining

questions.

Shhh—this is the sky unknitting itself,

wrapping you

in a baptism of cold, the monologue

of the wind

publishing its feathered rhetoric

across the roll

and dip of the field, the frozen cat-

tailed marsh.

A cardinal. A buckthorn. A sentence

of red berries

interrupted. You have entered

a kingdom

of unknowing—Holy is the sound

of forgetting.

Falling snow

This poem was originally published in Ascent (August 20, 2014).

See: http://www.readthebestwriting.com/ministry-of-snow-abigail-carroll/

Threading together a succession of exquisite metaphors—“someone / is scissoring the clouds,” “the hills / have become an undulating clause,” “this is the sky unknitting itself”—the poem softly invokes the silently holy. Religious diction—“ministry,” “psalm,” “baptism”—mingling with metaphors denotes that more than mere description is involved here. The close of the poem intimates manifold meanings—“Holy is the sound / of forgetting.”

UNHEARD by Midge Goldberg

What is it that’s here that tramples unheard,

No singing or dancing or waving toy sword?

The jangle-less sound of piano unstruck,

Some rattling and slamming of nothing unstuck,

The pillow’s unslept on, the bed is still made,

The board game is bored, and the play is unplayed.

Words go unwhispered and latches stay hooked,

The window unopened, the mirrors unlooked.

The door’s not ajar, yet they’ve come, unafraid:

The footsteps of absence, and silence unstayed.

Empty children's room

This poem was originally published in The Lyric (Winter Issue 2012), page 17.

“What’s wrong with this picture?” we might ask, recalling the familiar brainteaser. A child’s vacant bed, the playroom untouched, silence where there should be laughter, noise, diversion, and cheer—we know things are not as they should be. Desolation, “silence unstayed,” paradoxically—the scene indicates a haunting or possibly some deeper underlying anomaly in the universe.

The lyric is written in traditional form, with regular rhyme and meter.