The poem Keeping Quiet is written by Pablo Neruda deals with the idea of stillness in the midst of dynamism. He gives insights into the typical tones of life and uses silence as an important tool to address the very life of an individual. The idea of silence becomes important and he hints into that moment of silence and its impact on the individual lives as well as from the psychological scale.
The poet calls the world to join him to participate to stay still for a moment. He does not want any individual to speak any language and move around much or any motion for a moment. He states that it would be an “exotic moment” for the world to finally come at peace and enjoy the stillness and silence for once in a lifetime. He thinks that it would be “all together” in the “sudden strangeness”. Critically, the poet is wondering what could happen in that moment of silence and stillness and the meaning one can generate out of it.
In the poem, he also expresses that the fisherman would not be able to kill the “whales” and the workers who collect the salt would be unable to look at the pain on their hands in that moment of silence. He means to suggest that there would be some sort of calmness and peace of mind. He further takes it to a different scale of thoughts that there would be peace not only in the earth itself or within the lapse of nature but of the peace within the nations and between other human beings. He is talking about the powerful force of silence and stillness and its impact on human relationships and society as a whole. It is clearly captured in these lines where he becomes optimistic about the peaceful relationship between warring nations and soldiers who are coming together as one. Critically, this oneness is something that he delivers in the beginning and is stressing in the core idea of silence itself. The lines :
Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victories with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.
The poet tries to distinguish between silence and motion. He states that he is not talking about the complete rest but of the silence and stillness for a particular moment. He is addressing the fact that the silence can really establish or sprout a meaning to an individual in that spur of stressful and active lifestyle. The changing times have challenged every individual to lead a depressing life where he wants the individual to devote a moment of silence with the world where “perhaps a huge silence/might interrupt this sadness/of never understanding ourselves/and of threatening ourselves with/death”.
Pablo Neruda Tonight I can Write as a Post-Colonial Poem
