Thomas Merton - Heard only in 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 it 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 virginal point of pure nothingness
    which is at the center of all other loves.

    I attempt to cultivate this plant
    without contempt
    in the middle of the night
    and water it with psalms and prophecies
    in silence.
    It becomes the most rare
    of all the trees in the garden,
    at once the primordial paradise tree,
    the AXIS MUNDI,
    the cosmic axle,
    and the Cross ...

    There is only one such tree.
    It cannot be multiplied.

    - Thomas Merton, essay, "Day of the Stranger", 1965

 "Thomas Merton: One Foot in the Wilderness, One Foot in the World."

http://merton.org/