Studio8 - Uniting the Arts

I Don't Know How To Give You Peace


I don't know how to give you peace
how to heal your wounds, make your
scars disappear,

I don't know how to ride the wild wind today,
form the sun from this blood-wet clay I hold
in my hands,

O Israel!
O Palestine!

You were radiant then, in your olive groves;
your loaves of bread broken in friendship,
your fish bountiful, unspared

I don't know how to carry a cross
across the ocean,

your exodus of narrow streets, black veils of
mourning,
our tears filled with Gethsemane,

I don't know how to scrape fear from the bottom
of my begging bowl,
I don't know how to summon the dove of peace--
find that far land time has forgotten,
needing no amends.


I wrote this poem in 2007 as a response to our Middle East Peace Forum as the group had returned to personal attacking and a disquietude born from forgetting our one and only goal: Peace. Perhaps it shall be remembered that all, no matter how hurtful and hateful is still a call to heal old wounds.

another one on the same subject...


when the olive trees were bulldozed


bury my heart
near the empty spaces
where olive trees
once pressed
against a thousand years of sky,

when men walked across
the land
in the language of prayer
and caterpillars became butterflies,

now Caterpilars are yellow bulldozers
that break holy ground,
the olive trees are gone
and wildflowers are memories
behind thirty-foot walls.

I bow my head.

maybe peace can´t be given but you can be peace... so beautiful poems, Kailashana!

Yes. Thich Nhat Hanh's book title says it well: "Peace in Every Step"

or Gandhi: "Be the change you want to see."

Thanks for reading and your *beautiful* comment.

~Ac

for a holy land, this part of earth sure has seen its share... more than its share ...of human misery and aggression over the centuries, right from genesis and on...

nicely done..