Silence Poems | Poemist

Popular Silence Poems

Still

by Wislawa Szymborska

In sealed box cars travel
names across the land,
and how far they will travel so,
and will they ever get out,
don't ask, I won't say, I don't know.

The name Nathan strikes fist against wall,
the name Isaac, demented, sings,
the name Sarah calls out for water for
the name Aaron that's dying of thirst.

......

Remembrances

by John Clare

Summer pleasures they are gone like to visions every one
And the cloudy days of autumn and of winter cometh on
I tried to call them back but unbidden they are gone
Far away from heart and eye and for ever far away
Dear heart and can it be that such raptures meet decay
I thought them all eternal when by Langley Bush I lay
I thought them joys eternal when I used to shout and play
On its bank at 'clink and bandy' 'chock' and 'taw' and
ducking stone
Where silence sitteth now on the wild heath as her own

......

Duino Elegies: The First Elegy

by Rainer Maria Rilke

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels'
hierarchies? and even if one of them suddenly
pressed me against his heart, I would perish
in the embrace of his stronger existence.
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror
which we are barely able to endure and are awed
because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.
Each single angel is terrifying.
And so I force myself, swallow and hold back
the surging call of my dark sobbing.

......

Without a voice

by Kaylee Wilson

All the words
that never left my mouth
creep through my veins
filling the hollows of my mind
and my lungs with stone
encasing the very essence of me
in lead

weighing me down
as the murky depths

......

Exposure

by Wilfred Owen

I

1 Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knife us ...
2 Wearied we keep awake because the night is silent ...
3 Low drooping flares confuse our memory of the salient ...
4 Worried by silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous,
5 But nothing happens.

6 Watching, we hear the mad gusts tugging on the wire.
7 Like twitching agonies of men among its brambles.

......

Recent Silence Poems

Without a voice

by Kaylee Wilson

sounds of day: prelude

by Rikske Kessner

Today has yet to break its silence, at dawn
the first rays sparkle off dew or frost or snow
followed by a rooster’s crow and we know
Yesterday rescinds its front row seat for another

"The stars are deaf tonight."

by Dylan Wu Rong

I hear the silence in the way they blink,
the ignorance raining on me,
its ridiculous- I am ridiculous.
it is the answer granted to me.
Every time I glance upon myself on the window,
even the clown of the circus laughs,
bowing down to me- in pity or respect or tease,
I shall take it, I’m desperate, so what?
Should I stop or let it flow,
I fear even the night breeze hides from me.

......

"A song with no melody."

by Dylan Wu Rong

In each note that he played,
in the notes resonating from his fingers as he strung the thread,
I saw a fragment of something pure-
like the white snow of the first fall,
the cold dew of the dark dawn.
And within the purity it held, hidden was remorse and languor.
Away from the eagle eyes of mortal beasts,
I saw him succumb to the regret,
the regret that he never owned,
and a part of me wants to soothe him,

......

Reflections of the Self

by Ayatullah Nurjati

As I stand, a poet in an ocean of words,
Unspoken feelings, unheard verses surge.
What is this craft, this calling to write?
Is it light for others or my own plight?

I pen the tales of others, the struggles they bear,
Yet each word I write is a weight I wear.
To live, to serve, to break free from norm,
A poet’s life—a perpetual storm.

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