Thomas Merton’s In Silence challenges us to hear the fire within stillness. This hauntingly beautiful poem invites deep reflection on identity, presence, and the mystery of being.. When silence stops being empty and starts asking your name, are you ready to listen?
In Silence
Thomas Merton
Be still.
Listen to the stones of the wall.
Be silent, they try
to speak your
name.
Listen
to the living walls.
Who are you?
Who
are you? Whose
silence are you?
Who (be quiet)
are you (as these stones
are quiet). Do not
think of what you are
still less of
what you may one day be.
Rather
be what you are (but who?)
be the unthinkable one
you do not know.
O be still, while
you are still alive,
and all things live around you
speaking (I do not hear)
to your own being,
speaking by the unknown
that is in you and in themselves.
“I will try, like them
to be my own silence:
and this is difficult. The whole
world is secretly on fire. The stones
burn, even the stones they burn me.
How can a man be still or
listen to all things burning?
How can he dare to sit with them
when all their silence is on fire?”
Poignant Reflection:
Merton’s poem doesn’t whisper—it smolders. In the stillness he describes, silence isn’t absence but presence, burning with unspoken truth and relentless questioning. To be still, truly still, is to sit with the fire of existence and dare to let it speak your name.
Reflective Questions:
- What does it mean to “be your own silence” in a world that constantly demands noise?
- Have you ever felt the weight of your own presence in stillness—something unspoken rising from within?
- How might the metaphor of fire within silence reshape the way you listen to the world around you?