Silence Poems | Poemist

Popular Silence Poems

The Man With The Hoe (Written After Seeing Millet's World-Famous Painting)

by Edwin Markham

Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans
Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground,
The emptiness of ages in his face,
And on his back the burden of the world.
Who made him dead to rapture and despair,
A thing that grieves not and that never hopes,
Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?
Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw?
Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow?
Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?

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Palme

by Paul Valéry

Veiling, barely, his dread
Beauty and its blaze,
An angel sets warm bread
and cool milk at my place.
His eyelids make the sign
Of prayer; I lower mine,
Words interleaving vision:
--Calm, calm, be ever calm!
Feel the whole weight a palm
Bears upright in profusion.

......

The Victims

by Sharon Olds

When Mother divorced you, we were glad. She took it and
took it in silence, all those years and then
kicked you out, suddenly, and her
kids loved it. Then you were fired, and we
grinned inside, the way people grinned when
Nixon's helicopter lifted off the South
Lawn for the last time. We were tickled
to think of your office taken away,
your secretaries taken away,
your lunches with three double bourbons,

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Duino Elegies: The Tenth Elegy

by Rainer Maria Rilke

That some day, emerging at last from the terrifying vision
I may burst into jubilant praise to assenting angels!
That of the clear-struck keys of the heart not one may fail
to sound because of a loose, doubtful or broken string!
That my streaming countenance may make me more resplendent
That my humble weeping change into blossoms.
Oh, how will you then, nights of suffering, be remembered
with love. Why did I not kneel more fervently, disconsolate
sisters, more bendingly kneel to receive you, more loosely
surrender myself to your loosened hair? We, squanderers of

......

Ulysses

by Alfred Lord Tennyson

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel; I will drink
Life to the lees. All times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades

......

Recent Silence Poems

Towards the Core of Silence

by Nkwachukwu Ogbuagu

Away from pesky leeches and from
Broken, sad walls,
I strive towards the centre.

Voices are hidden from fallen, spavined horses,
And echoes draped in robes of
Mutiny fly past.

The centre retains the pith of silence.
Heart-murmurs celebrate the only known

......

Silence

by Nkwachukwu Ogbuagu

Silence faces the contours of a
somnolent east when winds from a
rising slope say their prayers in muffled
voices, through the raucous sounds of
rolling autumnal leaves, painted red and
orange by God’s apprentices here on this
fragile, rambunctious earth that pines away
when silence pulls its cloak up and yawns.

You!

by Michael R. Burch

These are poems about relationships, with lovers, family members, and a God (real or fictitious?)

You!
by Michael R. Burch

For thirty years You have not spoken to me;
I heard the dull hollow echo of silence
as though strange communion between us.

......

Sanctuary

by Evelyn Judy Buehler

I was a stylish, assertive travel agent, arranging getaways for busy people;
Like sudden getaways of jewel, shooting stars, on ebony nights of upheaval.

I planned calm, exotic, trip itineraries, for all tired of city hustle and bustle;
Like a dark red flower, blooming isolated, in peach sunshine of little trouble.

I also arranged for transportation and lodging, for exhausted, glad travelers;
As beauty birds fly north and south singing, ever ecstatic, joy ambassadors.

I began dreaming of a getaway myself, one of complete rest and relaxation.

......

A Drunks Sober Mind

by Johnathon B

People are noisy.
Sitting in the dark I can hear the highway from miles away.
The trucks screaming over the metal bridge that's there for the construction.
The cars on their ways to work.
Honking horns sometimes bullet the air.
I wonder if people ever realize how noisy they are?
I bet there's a guy in Brooklyn that's never truly heard quiet in his life.
Maybe that's why people make movies about nature and what it's like to be outside on adventures.
Or just truly outside, in nature.
Sometimes I think I've never truly heard quiet.

......