Complete solutions to the NCERT Flamingo textbook’s own questions on Poetry Poem 2, “Keeping Quiet” by Pablo Neruda. This is a short unit: the book gives one pre-reading prompt (“Before you read”), four “Think it out” questions, one reflective activity (“Try this out”) and one note on the stanza structure. Try answering each one yourself first, then check.
1 Before You Read (Pre-Reading Prompt, Not Scored)
Q. What does the title of the poem suggest to you? What do you think the poem is about?
Answer: This is a pre-reading prompt meant to be answered before studying the poem, so there is no single correct answer. A reasonable response before reading might guess that “Keeping Quiet” is about the value of silence or stillness. Having read the poem, we now know it is more specific than that: it is a call for one shared, brief, universal pause, no speech, little movement, no rush or engines, so human beings can look inward and feel a sense of togetherness, and it is explicitly not a call for death or permanent inactivity.
2 Think It Out
Q. What will counting upto twelve and keeping still help us achieve?
Answer: Counting to twelve and keeping still would give everyone, everywhere, one shared, brief pause: no speech in any language, arms not moved “so much”, no rush and no engines. In that pause, fishermen “would not harm whales”, the man gathering salt “would look at his hurt hands”, and even the makers of “green wars” would put on clean clothes and walk about with their “brothers” in the shade, doing nothing. Most importantly, it would let human beings step back from being “so single-minded / about keeping our lives moving”: “perhaps a huge silence / might interrupt this sadness / of never understanding ourselves”. The book’s own note sums this up as “quiet introspection and creating a feeling of mutual understanding among human beings.”
Q. Do you think the poet advocates total inactivity and death?
Answer: No. The poet directly rules this out in his own words: “What I want should not be confused with total inactivity. Life is what it is about; I want no truck with death.” He asks only for a brief, deliberate pause, counting to twelve, not for people to stop living or for activity to end forever. The poem’s real purpose is introspection, a moment to understand ourselves better, not a wish for death or permanent stillness.
Q. What is the ‘sadness’ that the poet refers to in the poem?
Answer: The poet names this sadness directly: it is the sadness “of never understanding ourselves and of threatening ourselves with death.” Because human beings are “so single-minded about keeping our lives moving,” they do not pause to understand themselves, and this same restless activity keeps humanity threatening itself with death, as the stanza says. The poet suggests that “perhaps” a shared silence “might interrupt this sadness”.
Q. What symbol from Nature does the poet invoke to say that there can be life under apparent stillness?
Answer: The poet invokes the Earth itself: “Perhaps the Earth can teach us as when everything seems dead and later proves to be alive.” Just as the Earth can seem completely lifeless and later prove to be alive, human stillness is not the same as death. One reading is that it is the condition life can renew itself from, which is why the poet is not asking for inactivity or death, only for a pause.
3 Try This Out (Reflective Activity, Not Scored)
Q. Choose a quiet corner and keep still, physically and mentally, for about five minutes. Do you feel any change in your state of mind?
Answer: This is a personal reflective activity with no fixed answer. Write down what, if anything, changes in your state of mind: for example, whether you notice sounds or thoughts you usually miss, or whether you feel calmer at the end. Trying this once helps make the poem’s central idea, that a deliberate pause can lead to better self-understanding, something felt rather than only read.
Q. Notice the differing line lengths of the stanzas and the shift in thought from stanza to stanza.
Answer: As the book prints the poem, it has 8 stanzas of 2, 4, 4, 4, 7, 13, 3 and 2 printed lines (39 in all). There is no fixed length, and the thought shifts as the stanzas change: the proposal to count to twelve and keep still (stanza 1); the pause widened to the whole Earth (2); the “exotic moment” of togetherness (3); the fishermen and the man gathering salt (4); the makers of war (5); the poet’s clarification that he does not mean “total inactivity” or death, followed in the same stanza by the “sadness” of “never understanding ourselves” (6); the Earth’s lesson (7); and the handover to “you” (8). The longest stanza carries the poet’s own explanation, and the shortest ones, the first and the last, carry the counting.