A poem, reflecting on silence and our fear of it.

COUNTDOWN

by Michaela Youngson

Words that break silence

carry a currency greater

than the cheap words

of our endless babble.

The Babel unravelling of human

relating, reveals a creator

who, with fingers in divine ears

wants some peace 

and, perhaps, 

to get a word in edgeways.

And what of the babblers?

We rabbit on, afraid that

should we refrain, pause,

stop, for a single second,

we might hear in the silence,

the clock-tick rhythm of our 

heartbeats and be reminded

that this is a count down

to a greater silence.

Today the power of a few lines, drawn at speed, on a piece of paper, took on a new significance. Perhaps we should all draw cartoons and pictures to offer an image of a world at peace - flood Twitter, Facebook, newspapers and TV screens with the scribbles of children made with wax crayons, with the reluctant attempts of adults once told that they 'couldn't draw', the shaky hardly-holding-the-pencil attempts of the elderly - we could paper the mosques, churches, synagogues, banks, hospitals, schools, libraries... with our dreams of peace.