the silence

.

One might say

I had decided to marry

the silence of the forest.

The sweet dark warmth of

the whole world

will have to be my wife.

Out of the heart of

that dark warmth

comes the secret that is heard

only in silence,

but is the root of all the secrets

that are whispered

by all the lovers in their beds

all over the world.

So perhaps I have an obligation to

preserve the stillness,

the silence, the poverty,

the original virginal point of

pure nothingness

which is at the center

of all other loves.

~  Thomas Merton

photo by eliot porter