All My Life I’ve Been Waiting
By: Harold Norse
All my life I've been waiting for something unusual to happen. I may yet come into a windfall, National Endowment of the Hearts. All my life I've been expecting a grand finale, an awakening, love erupting in the streets, in the bars, in classrooms, everyone dropping their guard, their pants, their skirts, cops weeping tenderly as they snap off your cuffs, bankers giving away their money, politicians telling the truth, literary critics confessing that they know nothing about writing or life. All my life I've been waiting for something unusual to happen.
You can find this poem in — In the Hub of the Fiery Force: Collected Poems 1934-2003
Norse’s piece touched me deeply. And then there’s Pablo Neruda’s take:
Keeping Quiet
Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still
for once on the face of the earth,
let’s not speak in any language;
let’s stop for a second,
and not move our arms so much.
It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines;
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.
Fishermen in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would look at his hurt hands.
Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victories with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.
What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
Life is what it is about;
I want no truck with death.
If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.
Now I’ll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.
We wait..wait, and wait...there's no change.
Until
All of a sudden
All at once.
Everything changes.