Silent words

Photograph by George Angus

For a while now I’ve been walking around with a printout of a poem by Wendell Berry in my journal. I had it in a file on my computer, totally forgot about it and while I was searching for something else I discovered it again.

On face value it is a beautiful poem, but it was as if it somehow struck an even deeper chord in me. I found it difficult to describe why exactly that was the case. So I made the printout and read it every now and again, meditated on it and wrote in its margins. I wanted to get out of the way so that it could work its magic on me in every way it pleased.

Words

1.

   What is one to make of a life given

   to putting things into words,

   saying them, writing them down?

   Is there a world beyond words?

   There is. But don't start, don't

   go on about the tree unqualified,

   standing in light that shines

   to time's end beyond its summoning

   name. Don't praise the speechless

   starlight, the unspeakable dawn.

   Just stop.

2.

   Well, we can stop,

   for a while, if we try hard enough,

   if we are lucky. We can sit still,

   keep silent, let the phoebe, the sycamore,

   the river, the stone call themselves

   by whatever they call themselves, their own

   sounds, their own silences; and thus

   may know for a moment the nearness

   of the world, its vastness,

   its vast variousness, far and near,

   which only silence knows. And then

   we must call all things by name

   out of the silence again to be with us,

   or die of namelessness.

~Wendell Berry~

Looking back, I would say it initially appealed to me because of my creative state at the end of last year. I had a long stretch of strenuous manual labour behind me and it felt as if I was dry for words. It was difficult to write anything. I could identify with Berry’s question concerning that which lies on the other side of words. If I struggle with them, what can I expect beyond them, where there are no words? The mere fact that I felt the poem touched on the issue I had difficulty with was a source of comfort, even though it was the result of my very subjective interpretation at that stage.

The beauty of poetry is that it can nourish and sooth you even if you go about it the “wrong” way. If that is what we need at that point it is willing to serve us thus. There is love in that.

However, on a deep level I knew there was something more to it. It stayed in my journal.

Gradually I discovered in it the perfect description of the contemplative life with meditation as the conscious act of stopping and passage into the silence. Against that background and paraphrased in my own words, the poem is saying the following:

Our world is a world of many words in all shapes and sizes. They constantly fill our spaces. Is it even possible to consider that there might be something on the other side of that, in that domain where words don’t rule?

There is, but do not make the mistake of talking endlessly about that. We are not doing that world any favour by even lyrically praising that which cannot be expressed in or described by words. It will remain our vocabulary, our expressions. We won’t gain entrance to the inexpressible by hijacking it and pulling it into our egotistic frame of reference. Please, just stop.

Well, we can stop for a while, if we apply ourselves and if we’re lucky. Because in many ways it is not under our control, not our domain. Our egos must step back. We enter as a guest. For us in the West it is all the more difficult, but we can always try. And when we fail, begin again and try once more. Which is the very nature of meditation.

And when we stop our obsessive activities, when we become silent, we’ll hear. When we stop to dominate and rule, constantly taking centre stage, forcing our opinions and conclusions onto everything around us, we’ll find there is way more than our words and our sounds in this world. As a matter of fact, there is a whole world other than ours. Even the most mundane, the overlooked, that which is taken for granted, will reveal themselves to us as objects of deeper dimensions and meaning. We might find it very unsettling, because there is no way to predict or control this process.

Something paradoxically will happen: we will find the world to be intimately close and exceedingly vast, more varied in the silence than in all the topics of our incessant conversations put together.

Are we to take it then that we should try to remain in the silence and never talk or converse again? No, we must return to our world of words, but as changed, humble people. People who know that their expressive range is very limited and that it is a very lonely existence when we’re the centre of the universe. Like being attached by some umbilical cord we must remain connected to the world of silence and relate with objects differently, sensitive to their deep essence and dignity. Ironically, if we don’t do that, we will never get to know our own deeper dimensions, our true self.

The only way we can be who we are is to let everything be deeply what it is. We can string sentences and talk about it, but it must be cradled in and flow from silence. We listen ourselves into being.

Even though the poem has a gentle pace and slow rhythm, it has an underlying urgency to it. It builds up towards the final line. Death is involved. The contemplative life is much more than the mere subject of some people’s fancies. It might even be the key to the survival of the planet.

I am going to keep the poem in my journal. I need it.

George