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Colin MacRae's avatar

KEEPING QUIET

For once on the face of the earth

Let’s not speak in any language;

Let’s stop for one second

And not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic movement

Without rush, without engines.

We would all be together

In a sudden strangeness.

Fishermen in the cold sea

Would not harm whales,

And the man gathering salt

Would look at his hurt hands.

Those who prepare green wars,

Wars with gas, wars with fire

Victories with no survivors

Would put on clean clothes

And walk about with their brothers

In the shade doing nothing.

What I want should not be confused

With total inactivity.

Life is what it is about.

I want no truck with death.

If we were not so single-minded

About keeping our lives moving,

Perhaps a huge silence

Might interrupt this sadness

Of never understanding ourselves

And of threatening ourselves with death.

Perhaps the earth can teach us

As when everything seems dead

And later proves to be alive. Pablo Neruda

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Colin MacRae's avatar

Hello sun in my face. Hello, you who made the morning and spread it over the fields. Watch now how I start the day in happiness, in kindness.

What I want in my life is to be dazzled- to cast aside the weight of facts and maybe even to float a little above this difficult world. I want to believe I am looking into the white fire of a great mystery; to believe that the imperfections are nothing- that the light is everything- that it is more than the sum of each flawed blossoms rising and fading. And I do! Mary Oliver

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