On Remembrance Day in Britain, many people join in two minutes of silence to memorialize the dead. When Malcolm Guite did that, it prompted this response:
“There was something extraordinarily powerful about that deep silence from a ‘live’ radio, a sense that, alone in my kitchen, I was sharing the silence with millions. I stood for the two minutes, and then, suddenly, swiftly, almost involuntarily, wrote this sonnet.”
SILENCE
November pierces with its bleak remembrance
Of all the bitterness and waste of war.
Our silence tries but fails to make a semblance
Of that lost peace they thought worth fighting for.
Our silence seethes instead with wraiths and whispers,
And all the restless rumour of new wars,
The shells are falling all around our vespers,
No moment is unscarred, there is no pause,
In every instant bloodied innocence
Falls to the weary earth, and whilst we stand
Quiescence ends again in acquiescence,
And Abel’s blood still cries in every land.
One silence only might redeem that blood —
Only the silence of a dying God.
-Malcolm Guite
Please hear Fr. Guite read his sonnet here: “Silence”
Gladsome Lights 
That silence is very powerful indeed. We will attend the Remembrance Day Parade tomorrow – always the Sunday closest to the 11th November.
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He describes God as dying. It highlights his desperation. It’s disturbing on a level difficult to describe.
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What a poignant piece of writing, and what an fitting conclusion. Thank you for sharing it.
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So powerful, so timely, so heartbreakingly true . . .
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Powerful…
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Too bad I couldn’t hear the poet reading his poem. I got a pop-up that said the page was not available. Nevertheless, the poem is very appropriate for our times.
GM
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Thanks for telling me. I’ll try to find out what’s wrong.
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I was able to click through from my computer to Fr Guite’s recording… BUT then I noticed that if I tried, from his site, to click on the link in the word Silence it doesn’t work. You have to click on the arrow that starts the recording, just above that.
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Thank you. That worked just fine.
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I’d be willing to bet that Malcolm Guite writes All his sonnets swiftly, if not suddenly; there are so many of them, he’s a master of the craft and they are all meaningful, beautiful and moving. An amazing man! Or perhaps I should say an amazing gift that he has.
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