Saturday 31st December 2022 into 2023
With the now departing year
May your cares &sorrows ease
May the new year drawing near
Bring you happiness and peace. SC. Foster
IT IS TIME TO STOP DEFINING PEACE
AS THE ABSENCE OF WAR
AND START DEFINING IT
AS THE PRESENCE OF LOVE
Making Peace
by Denise Levertov
A voice from the dark called out,
‘The poets must give us
imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar
imagination of disaster. Peace, not only
the absence of war.’
But peace, like a poem,
is not there ahead of itself,
can’t be imagined before it is made,
can’t be known except
in the words of its making,
grammar of justice,
syntax of mutual aid.
A feeling towards it,
dimly sensing a rhythm, is all we have
until we begin to utter its metaphors,
learning them as we speak.
A line of peace might appear
if we restructured the sentence our lives are making,
revoked its reaffirmation of profit and power,
questioned our needs, allowed
long pauses . . .
A cadence of peace might balance its weight
on that different fulcrum; peace, a presence,
an energy field more intense than war,
might pulse then,
stanza by stanza into the world,
each act of living
one of its words, each word
a vibration of light—facets
of the forming crystal.
PhotoS taken 29 th December 2022..
Thomas and Eleanor walking the cobbled lanes of St Ives, Cornwell.UK