Silence

We've been discussing the relationship between doing movement (or the water ritual) with words versus doing movement in silence. I chanced upon three poems that reminded me of the power of the latter mode, silence:

Those Who Love, Sara Teasdale

Those who love the most,
Do not talk of their love,
Francesca, Guinevere,
Dierdre, Iseult, Heloise,
In the fragrant gardens of heaven
Are silent, or speak if at all
Of fragile, inconsequent things.
.
And a woman I used to know
Who loved one man from her youth,
Against the strength of the fates
Fighting in somber pride,
Never spoke of this thing,
But hearing his name by chance,
A light would pass over her face.


An Excerpt from Silence by Billy Collins

There is the sudden silence of the crowd
above a motionless player on the field,
and the silence of the orchid.

The silence of the falling vase
before it strikes the floor
the silence of the belt when it is not striking the child.
. . .

The silence before I wrote a word
and the poorer silence now.

Excerpt from Silence by Billy Collins. The Trouble with Poetry and Other Poems.

Fishing in the Keep of Silence, Linda Gregg

There is a hush now while the hills rise up
and God is going to sleep. He trusts the ship
of Heaven to take over and proceed beautifully
as he lies dreaming in the lap of the world.
He knows the owls will guard the sweetness
of the soul in their massive keep of silence,
looking out with eyes open or closed over
the length of Tomales Bay that the herons
conform to, whitely broad in flight, white
and slim in standing. God, who thinks about
poetry all the time, breathes happily as He
repeats to Himself: There are fish in the net,
lots of fish this time in the net of the heart.

painting above: Vilhelm Hammershøi. Interior with Young Woman seen from the Back, 1903