IN SILENCE
by Thomas Merton 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?”