Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Peace

"Smiling is very important. If we are not able to smile, then the world will not have peace." ~ Nhat Hanh

"There is no way to peace; peace is the way." ~ A. J. Muste

“I went to jail for 11 days for disturbing the peace; 
I was trying to disturb the war."
~ Joan Baez

wiki

Midweek Motif ~ Peace

I want a peace so large that I can not reach its boundaries.  I have experienced this a few times in retreats, more times alone.  But I want even more than personal peace.  I want social and political peace ~ and not just any peace ~ peace with justice. Yet until that comes, I won't scoff at personal peace.  It helps me through the life we have.  What about you?

Have you known peace?  What was it like?  How large a peace can you imagine?  How does that change when we imagine peace ~ or create peace ~ together? 

Please write and post a new poem, addressing how you know peace now. Make us feel it.

   

The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness, with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells Wakan-Tanka, and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us. 
 ~ Black Elk

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I Many Times Thought Peace Had Come (739)

by Emily Dickinson

I many times thought Peace had come
When Peace was far away—
As Wrecked Men—deem they sight the Land—
At Centre of the Sea—

And struggle slacker—but to prove
As hopelessly as I—
How many the fictitious Shores—
Before the Harbor be— 

  

Peace           

by Sara Teasdale

Peace flows into me
As the tide to the pool by the shore;
It is mine forevermore,
It ebbs not back like the sea.

I am the pool of blue
That worships the vivid sky;
My hopes were heaven-high,
They are all fulfilled in you.

I am the pool of gold
When sunset burns and dies--
You are my deepening skies,
Give me your stars to hold.

Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God. ~ Jesus

"Better than a thousand hollow words
Is one word that brings peace.
Better than a thousand hollow verses
Is one verse that brings peace." ~ Gautama Buddha

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Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others in the spirit of the community— (Next week Susan’s Midweek Motif will be ~ Plastic Bags. )

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Peace

Antonio Balestra, Justice and Peace Embracing, ca. 1700

Mercy and truth meet together: righteousness and peace kiss each other.
Psalm 85:10

If you look at human society, it is very easy, of course, to compare our warfare and territoriality with the chimpanzee. But that's only one side of what we do. We also trade, we intermarry, we allow each other to travel through our territory. There's an enormous amount of cooperation. Indeed, among hunter-gatherers, peace is common 90 percent of the time, and war takes place only a small part of the time. . . .
Jane Goodall

Without peace, all other dreams vanish and are reduced to ashes.
Jawaharlal Nehru

source

If you cannot find peace within yourself, you will never find it anywhere else.

― Marvin Gaye

She wanted so to be tranquil, to be someone who took walks in the late-afternoon sun, listening to the birds and crickets and feeling the whole world breathe. Instead, she lived in her head like a madwoman locked in a tower, hearing the wind howling through her hair and waiting for someone to come and rescue her from feeling things so deeply that her bones burned.

― Carrie Fisher

Peaceable Kingdom by Edward Hicks (1834)

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Midweek Motif ~ Peace

Yearning for peace, I ask:

Where do we have peace in our lives?  How can we ~ as humans, as poets ~ help peace spread?  To whom would we give a peace prize?

Your Challenge:  Make peace the mood and motif of your new poem. Here is more food for thought:

List of all Nobel Peace Prize Laureates

List of all Nobel Peace Prize awarded organizations

John Lennon peace mural wall, Praha.(1993)

        

Grief There Is And Death

by Rabindranath Tagore, 

(Recipient of the 1913 Nobel Prize in Literature)

          (translated by Sumana Roy)

Grief there is, and Death; Partings char.

Yet Peace and Bliss and the Infinite stir.
Flows life ceaselessly, beam the sun, moon and stars
In striking tints and hues Spring shows up in bowers.
Waves ebb waves rise.
Wilt flowers and bloom buds.
Decays not, ends not, never ever depletes,
Unto that wholeness the mind begs a retreat.

        (The Song is Here sung by Lopamudra Mitra)

"Possibilities" by Maria Wisława Anna Szymborska

(Recipient of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature.)

Pine Forest 

by Gabriela Mistral

(Recipient of the 1945 Nobel Prize in Literature.)

Let us go now into the forest.

Trees will pass by your face,

and I will stop and offer you to them,

but they cannot bend down.

The night watches over its creatures,

except for the pine trees that never change:

the old wounded springs that spring

blessed gum, eternal afternoons.

If they could, the trees would lift you

and carry you from valley to valley,

and you would pass from arm to arm,

a child running

from father to father.

For You

by Carl Sandburg

The peace of great doors be for you.
Wait at the knobs, at the panel oblongs.
Wait for the great hinges.

The peace of great churches be for you,
Where the players of loft pipe organs
Practice old lovely fragments, alone.

The peace of great books be for you,
Stains of pressed clover leaves on pages,
Bleach of the light of years held in leather.

The peace of great prairies be for you.
Listen among windplayers in cornfields,
The wind learning over its oldest music.

The peace of great seas be for you.
Wait on a hook of land, a rock footing
For you, wait in the salt wash.

The peace of great mountains be for you,
The sleep and the eyesight of eagles,
Sheet mist shadows and the long look across.

The peace of great hearts be for you,

Valves of the blood of the sun,

Pumps of the strongest wants we cry.

The peace of great silhouettes be for you,
Shadow dancers alive in your blood now,
Alive and crying, “Let us out, let us out.”

The peace of great changes be for you.
Whisper, Oh beginners in the hills.
Tumble, Oh cubs—tomorrow belongs to you.

The peace of great loves be for you.
Rain, soak these roots; wind, shatter the dry rot.
Bars of sunlight, grips of the earth, hug these.

The peace of great ghosts be for you,
Phantoms of night-gray eyes, ready to go
To the fog-star dumps, to the fire-white doors.

Yes, the peace of great phantoms be for you,
Phantom iron men, mothers of bronze,
Keepers of the lean clean breeds.

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Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and 







visit others in the spirit of the community—




Next week Sumana's Midweek Motif will be "Rising Above."