Happy New Year
I just heard on the news that around the world today an extra second is being added to the universal clock time (used to be called Greenwich Mean, now it’s something else) because the earth wobbles just enough in its orbit that it comes up one second short in matching cumulative time and orbital time. Apparently, it does that periodically and needs to be corrected. The last correction was seven years ago. I had the thought, as I heard that, that ten seconds put aside for a correction, with instructions that the whole world tune into some shared frequency and listen to the ten second message, could change the world. Here is the Pablo Neruda poem, Keeping Quiet, that I had carried with me every place I teach for many years waiting for the chance to read it.
Happy New Year
Sylvia
“Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still
for once on the face of the earth,
let’s not speak in any language;
let’s stop for a second,
and not move our arms so much.
It would be an exotic moment
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 not 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...
If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.
Now I’ll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.”