Silence Poems | Poemist

Popular Silence Poems

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.

......

Pigeons

by Richard Kell

They paddle with staccato feet
In powder-pools of sunlight,
Small blue busybodies
Strutting like fat gentlemen
With hands clasped
Under their swallowtail coats;
And, as they stump about,
Their heads like tiny hammers
Tap at imaginary nails
In non-existent walls.

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Mandalay

by Rudyard Kipling

By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin' eastward to the sea,
There's a Burma girl a-settin', and I know she thinks o' me;
For the wind is in the palm-trees, and the temple-bells they say:
"Come you back, you British soldier; come you back to Mandalay!"
Come you back to Mandalay,
Where the old Flotilla lay:
Can't you 'ear their paddles chunkin' from Rangoon to Mandalay?
On the road to Mandalay,
Where the flyin'-fishes play,
An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China 'crost the Bay!

......

The Landing Of The Pilgrim Fathers

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The breaking waves dashed high
On a stern and rock-bound coast,
And the woods, against a stormy sky,
Their giant branches tost;

And the heavy night hung dark
The hills and water o'er,
When a band of exiles moored their bark
On the wild New England shore.

......

An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow

by Les Murray

The word goes round Repins,
the murmur goes round Lorenzinis,
at Tattersalls, men look up from sheets of numbers,
the Stock Exchange scribblers forget the chalk in their hands
and men with bread in their pockets leave the Greek Club:
There's a fellow crying in Martin Place. They can't stop him.

The traffic in George Street is banked up for half a mile
and drained of motion. The crowds are edgy with talk
and more crowds come hurrying. Many run in the back streets

......

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.

......