Let us all keep still

'Keeping Quiet' is a poem by the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. He asks us to count to twelve and then keep still, all of us, everywhere on earth, just for a moment.

During that moment, we would not speak in any language, and we would not move our arms so much. It would be an 'exotic' moment, strange and new: with no rush and no engines, we would all be together, in a sudden strangeness.

In that stillness, people would stop harming:

• fishermen in the cold sea would not harm the whales;
• the man gathering salt would look at his hurt hands, and notice his own suffering;
• those who prepare green wars, wars with gas and fire, and victories with no survivors, would put on clean clothes and walk about with their brothers in the shade, doing nothing.

The poet makes clear what he does not mean. He is not asking for total inactivity: 'life is what it is about', and he wants no truck with death. He wants us to pause, so that, for once, we can stop our constant activity and understand ourselves, and stop threatening ourselves with death.

The sadness he speaks of is the sadness of never understanding ourselves. We are so single-minded about keeping our lives moving that we never stop to ask where we are going right and where wrong. A pause is a chance for introspection: looking honestly at our own actions.

Putting on 'clean clothes' does not mean new clothes: it means giving up harmful ways and walking in peace with our fellow human beings, our 'brothers'.