Wage Peace

Poets Against the War, a volunteer organization, was started in 2003 by Sam Hamill and fifty other poets to collect poems that spoke out against the war in Iraq. The plan was to send the poems to the White House. Within days, 1,500 poets responded.

Now, Poets Against the War has a website which includes over 20,000 poems from poets all over the world.

Its mission is to continue “the tradition of socially engaged poetry by creating venues for poetry as a voice against war, tyranny and oppression.”

One of my favorite poems, Wage Peace by Judyth Hill, can be found at this site. It begins,

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Wage peace with your breath.

Breathe in firemen and rubble,
breathe out whole buildings
and flocks of red wing blackbirds.

Breathe in terrorists
and breathe out sleeping children
and freshly mown fields.

Breathe in confusion
and breathe out maple trees.

Breathe in the fallen
and breathe out lifelong friendships intact.

Wage peace with your listening:
hearing sirens, pray loud.

Remember your tools: flower seeds,
clothes pins, clean rivers.

Make soup.

Play music, memorize the words for thank you in three languages…

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The rest of the poem can be found at this link.

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Remembering John Lennon

October 9, 1940 - December 8, 1980 

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Even though it was 27 years ago, a fact that is nearly inconceivable to me, I still get tears in my eyes when I hear Happy Xmas (War is Over), the song that was played repeatedly that winter and in the years that followed as a kind of memorial. I remember  gathering with a group of friends at school, how stunned we were that anyone would want to hurt John Lennon let alone kill him, how we stood there waiting for an unknown sign to clarify the loss. Then, we scattered home to listen to his music and observe a moment of silence.  

 

Today, when I heard the song Imagine, I remembered that day again. I am no longer in touch with most of the friends I knew then, we wandered off on our separate paths, but there is some constancy that music offers, some continuance through time that allows one to reconnect with the spirit of the past that cannot be taken away.

 

One of the most tragic parallels between his time and ours is the persistence of horrific and unbearably brutal wars. The most powerful tribute to his memory is to continue to speak out against these atrocities and get United for Peace and Justice.

War is Over….if you want it