Hello,
It’s been quite an unsettling couple of weeks huh? We’ve all found ourselves in the middle of a global health crisis and none of us know how to best prepare for it. As we move towards practicing social distancing, we will all need to profoundly change the ways we interact within physical spaces and with each other. This amount of change and social distancing can feel isolating, so this is the time for finding compassion and inspiration in our day to day lives while cultivating generosity towards others.
We are now being forced to see the inequalities and real danger that is created and magnified by capitalistic structures and institutions and to recognise the self-serving behaviours we have all been baptised into. The good news is that we have the capacity to be resilient, and if we’re willing to use this forced isolation time to truly go inward, be still, and reconnect with ourselves and others, we can start to get back to the one cardinal fact of nature we all seem to have forgotten – that we are all in this together. There is no way for us to be alive and healthy without those around us being alive and healthy, that we are all part of the same living organism.
This issue’s poem is by Pablo Neruda – Neruda, a poet-diplomat from Chile, is one of the most influential and prolific poets of our time. He received a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971, where he talked about a common theme in his work, our interconnectedness, and a shared destiny. In his Nobel acceptance lecture, Neruda said: “We must pass through solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence in order to reach forth to the enchanted place where we can dance our clumsy dance and sing our sorrowful song – but in this dance or in this song there are fulfilled the most ancient rites of our conscience in the awareness of being human and of believing in a common destiny.”
Keeping Quiet
By Pablo Neruda, translated by Stephen Mitchell
Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still.This one time upon the earth,
let's not speak any language,
let's stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.It would be a delicious moment,
without hurry, without locomotives,
all of us would be together
in a sudden uneasiness.The fishermen in the cold sea
would do no harm to the whales
and the peasant gathering salt
would look at his torn hands.Those who prepare green wars,
wars of gas, wars of fire,
victories without survivors,
would put on clean clothing
and would walk alongside their brothers
in the shade, without doing a thing.What I want shouldn’t be confused
with final inactivity:
life alone is what matters,
I want nothing to do with death.If we weren’t unanimous
about keeping our lives so much in motion,
if we could do nothing for once,
perhaps a great silence would
interrupt this sadness,
this never understanding ourselves
and threatening ourselves with death.Perhaps the earth is teaching us
when everything seems to be dead
and then everything is alive.Now I will count to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.
In this poem, Neruda talks to us about the compulsive motion of our day to day lives that keeps us inert – strangers to ourselves and those around us. He talks about using stillness to cultivate a burning patience, and perhaps placing our faith in what the ‘earth is teaching us’ so that we may understand ourselves and our contract with the world and life itself a little better. When Neruda talks about ‘Stillness’, to me, it means reconnecting, developing empathy, and doing no harm, rather than actual inactivity. So that we may move towards a more compassionate and just society for all, one where we can serve each other equally and never again take for granted the front line workers, in the human and natural world that keep our lives running at great personal cost.
I hope this poem and issue have found you all well, I’m thinking of you all and wishing you health and stillness in these uncertain times.
During the next few weeks of isolation, I will be posting snippets more often, on Found Poems’ Twitter & Instagram accounts, do follow along for frequent, short bursts of poetic inspiration and solace! If there are other topics you would like me to cover or have any feedback, as always, I’ll be here listening.
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