Love Letters to Poetry | Different Kinds of Silence
Silence can be peaceful. Silence can make us feel calm. Silence can give us the space to dream, to love, to reach out compassionately to another person. Silence can be a spiritual space.
But there is also another kind of silence – one that destroys, instead of creating. The type of silence that can be cowardly. Silence which, in its worst form, might result in criminal negligence.
It is a kind of silence that I abhor and do my best to avoid. At a time when humanity faces so many challenges, when our world and our nation seem so terribly divided, I feel it’s my duty to use my words to help increase empathy. But there was a moment in my life that haunts me to this day – a moment when I remained silent but should have spoken up instead.
It is one of the most shameful incidents of my life, and it happened when I was in high school.
At the time, I lived in Chennai, a city in Southern India. I’d briefly read newspaper accounts of unrest in Sri Lanka – and heard grown-ups discussing a civil war that had broken out, among Sri Lankan citizens who spoke Sinhalese and were mostly Buddhist, and those who were of Tamil heritage (who had, presumably, immigrated from India to Sri Lanka several hundred years ago, and still spoke the language of Tamil, which is my mother tongue).
And then, refugees began to arrive. Teens who had been forced to flee the land they had called home. Four of them joined our class. All four of them had been separated from their families. They told stories of harrowing escapes from mobs that had chased them with weapons, stories of fleeing by leaping from burning rooftop to rooftop, of hiding in fear for their lives – until at last they reached a shore where they could board a boat that brought them to the shores of India and to safety. The pressure of the refugee population grew so large that the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, where I lived, declared an emergency; and, among other things, schools were closed, so that people could help with the tragic human situation.
I remember the moment , half-way through the morning lessons, when a teacher announced, to our class, that we would all have to go home, rightaway, because the state had ordered schools to close for an indefinite period of time, until the refugee crisis was resolved.
We erupted with whoops of joy. We clapped and smiled and whistled.
Then one of the boys who had come from Sri Lanka walked to the front of the raucous classroom. Standing where the teacher normally stood, he said, “I still have family back there. I don’t even know if my parents and brothers and sisters are still alive.”
I heard him. I wanted to walk over to him and tell him I was sorry for my thoughtlessness, in cheering along with the others. I wanted to make the others apologize. But I didn’t.
I felt ashamed. I fell silent. But I did not act.
I can still see his lanky frame, facing us. I can still hear the rest of the room, hooting and shouting, not caring about the truth of his words.
My guilt, at my cowardice, my lack of compassion, and my lack of courage that day remain with me to this day. And in a way, they inspired a short story that I wrote, which can be accessed through Common Lit, as well as my poem, “Undone,” which was published in Poetry magazine.
Poet Matt Forrest Esenwine recently asked me about this poem.
Matt Forrest Essenwine: I can't help but think of Matthew Shepard when I read this - was he on your mind at the time? Also, what was your rationale for breaking apart the lines on the right (the speaker's thoughts)? Obviously, you created two columns to show a dichotomy between POVs, but what about the spaces that separate the lines on the right? I know it slows the reader down to take in the pauses in the speaker's thought process, but I didn't know if there was something specific you had in mind…
My reply: I had every kind of hate on my mind when I wrote it. Is the bullying and bigotry religion based? Is it race based? Gender based? I want that to be whatever the reader wishes - whichever way the reader enters the poem. The horror of it is how silence can perpetrate this - and how we can be complicit in violence if we don't speak up.
As for the way the poem is created visually, I wanted the look of 3 columns in this poem, because in a way it's about 3 aspects of time - the past when the speaker did nothing, the present when the speaker is reflecting on the self, and the future which is hopeful because if one engages in self-reflection, hopefully one will do better in future. The 2 columns on the right as you view the page are close together because they're one POV, obviously, the internal monologue; the 1st column is watching what is being done by the bullies, and what the bullied kid is living through.
I also wanted to split the column on the right into two to emphasize the words safe, together, heard, away, words / haunt me every day. All of that, except for the last line, is a single word. In a sense it works as its own mini-poem... just as the first column, if read top to bottom could be its own mini poem.
Another reason for 3-ish columns is that there are 3 people coming together in the spaces of the poem - the narrator, the courageous kid who is being bullied, and the reader of the poem.
I wanted a whole lot of white space to reflect the silence which the poem is about, and for minimal words to provide tension, because it's about unspoken words... and the white space is a visual reminder of silent cowardice in this poem.
As for the title, it’s Undone, not Unsaid, because ultimately, not speaking is an action (or inaction) that we choose.
If I were asked to recommend one poetry anthology that should be on every school’s bookshelf, I’d recommend the March 2021 Young People’s Poetry issue of Poetry in which Undone first appeared. It not only contains exquisite poems by a variety of incredible poets (ranging from deeply respected poets who have created significant bodies of work like Nikki Grimes, Linda Sue Park, Marilyn Nelson, Elizabeth Acevedo, Naomi Shihab Nye to upcoming stars like Ari Tison and Suma Subramaniam), but is also bookended by pieces written by two of the most important writers for young people today: Jacqueline Woodson and Margarita Engle.
In her opening piece, entitled “Weight” Jacqueline Woodson speaks about her love “of the stories inside of songs. And the poetry.” She writes exquisitely about all that poems can do – for us as individuals and for us as a community.
In the final piece, Margarita Engle discusses “The Care and Feeding Of Poetry.” She shares with us her vital belief that “Children and poetry were born to love each other” and suggests ways in which adults can “help children preserve their natural love of rhythm, rhyme and other aspects of musical language.”
Both Woodson and Engle discuss the music of poetry, and both of them bring into my mind and heart that beautiful silence, from which all poems are created.
Writing Prompt
After reading or listening to the poem and the story, consider the ways in which storytelling differs from poetry. Also consider the ways in which both the story and the poem effectively use brevity. Consider what is said and what isn’t. Read the poem, pausing at the line breaks to understand how the poem uses silence as an auditory tool. Look at how the poem uses wordless space as a visual tool. Then, write your own poem, about a kind of silence – whether it’s not speaking up or it’s the other, beautiful type of silence. Pay attention not only to the words you use, but also to choosing where not to use words.
