Only silence enables us to say something unheard of. The compulsion of communication, by contrast, leads to the reproduction of the same, to conformism:

So it’s not a problem of getting people to express themselves but of providing little gaps of solitude and silence in which they might eventually find something to say. Repressive forces don’t

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Year’s End - Richard Wilbur

Now winter downs the dying of the year,

And night is all a settlement of snow;

From the soft street the rooms of houses show

A gathered light, a shapen atmosphere,

Like frozen-over lakes whose ice is thin

And still allows some stirring down within.

I’ve known the wind by water banks to shake

The late leaves down, which frozen wh

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