{"id":58990,"date":"2015-06-15T12:00:52","date_gmt":"2015-06-15T11:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=58990"},"modified":"2015-05-31T18:13:07","modified_gmt":"2015-05-31T17:13:07","slug":"keeping-quiet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/06\/keeping-quiet\/","title":{"rendered":"Keeping Quiet"},"content":{"rendered":"

Now we will count to twelve<\/em>
\nand we will all keep still.<\/em><\/p>\n

For once on the face of the earth,<\/em>
\nlet’s not speak in any language;<\/em>
\nlet’s stop for one second,<\/em>
\nand not move our arms so much.<\/em><\/p>\n

It would be an exotic moment<\/em>
\nwithout rush, without engines;<\/em>
\nwe would all be together<\/em>
\nin a sudden strangeness.<\/em><\/p>\n

Fisherman in the cold sea<\/em>
\nwould not harm whales<\/em>
\nand the man gathering salt<\/em>
\nwould look at his hurt hands.<\/em><\/p>\n

Those who prepare green wars,<\/em>
\nwars with gas, wars with fire,<\/em>
\nvictories with no survivors,<\/em>
\nwould put on clean clothes<\/em>
\nand walk about with their brothers<\/em>
\nin the shade, doing nothing.<\/em><\/p>\n

What I want should not be confused<\/em>
\nwith total inactivity.<\/em>
\nLife is what it is about;<\/em>
\nI want no truck with death.<\/em><\/p>\n

If we were not so single-minded<\/em>
\nabout keeping our lives moving,<\/em>
\nand for once could do nothing,<\/em>
\nperhaps a huge silence<\/em>
\nmight interrupt this sadness<\/em>
\nof never understanding ourselves<\/em>
\nand of threatening ourselves with death.<\/em>
\nPerhaps the earth can teach us<\/em>
\nas when everything seems dead<\/em>
\nand later proves to be alive.<\/em><\/p>\n

Now I’ll count up to twelve<\/em>
\nand you keep quiet and I will go.<\/em>
\n_______________________________<\/p>\n

Pablo Neruda was the pen name and, later, legal name of the Chilean poet-diplomat and politician Neftali Ricardo Reyes Basoalto (July 12, 1904 \u2013 September 23, 1973). He derived his pen name from the Czech poet Jan Neruda. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature<\/a> in 1971. Neruda became known as a poet when he was 10 years old. He wrote in a variety of styles, including surrealist poems, historical epics, overtly political manifestos, a prose autobiography, and erotically charged love poems such as the ones in his collection Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair<\/a> (1942). He often wrote in green ink, which was his personal symbol for desire and hope<\/em>. (Wikipedia)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now we will count to twelve
\nand we will all keep still.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[182],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry-format"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58990\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}