English (Core) · Ch 10 — Keeping Quiet
About the Poet and the Poem
About the Poet and the Poem
Pablo Neruda — the poet
Pablo Neruda was one of the most celebrated poets of the twentieth century. He was born in Chile and is remembered around the world for poetry that ranges from tender love lyrics to powerful political and social verse. Writing originally in Spanish, he became a voice for ordinary people and for peace, and his work carries a deep concern for humanity, justice and the natural world. His reputation as a major literary figure was crowned by the Nobel Prize in Literature, and his poems continue to be read and translated in countless languages. Because the poem studied here was written in Spanish and reaches most readers in English translation, some of the flavour of its original sound and rhythm is inevitably softened, but its thought and feeling come through clearly.
The poem "Keeping Quiet"
"Keeping Quiet" is a short, reflective poem that speaks in a calm, persuasive voice directly to all of humanity. Its central proposal is disarmingly simple: that everyone on Earth should agree to pause together for one brief moment of silence and stillness. The poet imagines counting slowly to twelve and then keeping absolutely quiet, without moving, without speaking, without the noise of engines and machines. This is not a demand for a grand revolution but an invitation to a small, shared act of stopping.
The purpose of that pause is quiet self-examination. In the ordinary rush of life, the poet suggests, people hurry about without ever looking inward or understanding what they are doing to themselves and to others. A moment of stillness would break that blind momentum. It would create an unusual sense of togetherness, because for once every person would be doing the same peaceful thing at the same time. It would also interrupt, even briefly, the many kinds of harm that human beings inflict — the killing of creatures, the wars fought with weapons and fire, the cruelty people show one another. In that interval, the poet hopes, humanity might catch its breath, feel its shared bond and begin to check its rush towards violence and self-destruction.
The poet is careful to say that this stillness is not the same as death or total idleness. He is not asking people to stop living; he is asking them to stop the mindless, destructive kind of activity long enough to think. Silence here is a doorway to reflection and renewal, not an end.
One of the most widely loved poems in the CBSE Class 12 English (Flamingo) NCERT syllabus, its gentle tone, its use of the inclusive "we" and its concrete, everyday images give it a quiet moral force. It reads less like a sermon and more like a friendly, serious request, which is one reason its plea for introspection, brotherhood and peace has stayed so widely loved.
Notice this expression
to have no truck with — to refuse to associate or deal with; to refuse to tolerate something. Neruda uses it in the line "I want no truck with death" to make clear that the stillness he asks for has nothing to do with death or lifelessness.