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”
St. Gabriel Fool-for-Christ of the Republic of Georgia fell asleep in death on this day in 1995. That is a modern saint! I was advised last year to “get to know” St. Gabriel, and one way I’ve learned about him was through the several videos about his life, which include a multitude of stories from people who knew him well.
