The Sunday Poem: Peace
Peace shouldn’t be quiet, clouds soft and pliant,
A mellow sky scene in blue.
Peace should be blaring, a jazz band past caring,
A squabble of children and you.
The clangor of pots, your eyes full of spots,
Buttercups growing in dew.
Peace is invention, it’s sustained attention,
It’s chemistry going kaboom.
It’s racing of go karts and artichoke hearts
And farming in Kalamazoo.
It’s silence as well, but the silence of bells
The moment they still for a few;
An aftershock sound that echoes around
And gives way to rush and to hue.
It’s not smug inertia, safe from what hurts ya;
Pain is what gives us the glue.
It’s temperate intemperance, all quantum events,
Mosquitoes buzzing canoes.
A whole raucous party, that’s peace’s priority:
Space to be scattered and true.
7 Responses to “The Sunday Poem: Peace”
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Nice. The agony and the ecstacy.
This is my favorite of all the Sunday poems.
Profound. I’m not sure I’m ready to agree with it, but I find it intriguing and will spend time pondering it.
I’ll find some noisy jazz to play in the background while I do, though. 😉
Yes, it’s my favourite, too. It so speaks to the issue of how peace has to have human live in it, i.e. justice, it can’t be the peace of the graveyard.
@Prok: “Where have all the flowers gone, long time passing…”
Funny how the old themes keep coming around again.
A song I had by heart by the time I was twelve… (I HAVE mentioned my hippie upbringing?)
[…] buzzing canoes. A whole raucous party, that�s peace�s priority: Space to be scattered and true. Raph’s Website � The Sunday Poem: Peace And then I shall quote from the Twelve Tenets of Shh! […]