Today, we need peace more than ever. Every single part of our world is embattled. Man against man, man against animal, animal against man, citizen against government, free speech against parochialism... it’s an endless list and a staggering one at that. How do we resolve issues? How do we do it in a way that works for every one? It’s easy and difficult at the same time — we need to work towards peace.
There was a man who fought with non-violence, who believed in truth and justice and liberation. We marked his birthday yesterday, on October 2. Mahatma Gandhi is inextricably linked to India’s history. This week, given the birth anniversary, I want to focus on peace and what it means to poets.
The average poet will tell you that she needs drama in her life. My favourite singer says, “…like the poet needs the pain…” and I agree with him. But does the drama produce poetry of peace or angst? Verse of violence or reconciliation? In ‘Making Peace’, Denise Levertov says, “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.”
One doesn’t seek merely the absence of war. Because the absence of war could sometimes be an oppressive, Kafkaesque state of existence, with a lot of holding of breath and walking on eggshells. No, the world needs not just absence, but also the presence of peace. The poet goes on to say that peace is, “a presence, an energy field more intense than war.” And so it is.
Peace can be found in spaces around us, the ones we take for granted. Libraries, not coffee shops, for instance. Wendell Berry is delighted to discover ‘The Peace of Wild Things’. When the poet is filled with despair and wonders about the kind of lives his children might lead, he goes and lies down, “where the wood drake/rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds./I come into the peace of wild things/who do not tax their lives with forethought/of grief.” In the, “day-blind stars waiting with their light,” the poet senses the grace and beauty of the world and is free.
There’s something to be said about this kind of peace. In a lush valley teeming with birds and insects, or at the edge of an ocean, even as the waves come crashing down all over us. Perhaps in the dappled display of sunshine on leaves. It’s a pity that we have all this peace-giving beauty around us and we seem oblivious to most of it.
Cathy Smith Bowers is admiring of the peace lilies in her home and how little they need of her. Just a bit of food and light. Even when they/thirst, they summon me with nothing/more than a soft/indifferent furl-/ing of their leaves.ÿ ( Peace Lilies) The metaphor of peace can be extended to so many different directions and entities.
In To Germany, Charles Hamilton Sorley speaks of a country in contradiction. In the first version, “You only saw your future bigly planned/And we, the tapering paths of our own mind/And in each other’s dearest ways we stand/And hiss and hate./And the blind fight the blind.” But it’s the second version of Germany that captures the heart and the mind. “When it is peace, then we may view again/With new-won eyes each other’s truer form/And wonder. Grown more loving-kind and warm/We’ll grasp firm hands and laugh at the old pain/When it is peace.”
Things work a lot better in times of peace. But as Gisela Kraft says in means to an end, “all we have is/what keeps its form/to hold something together/you must use force/even for peace.”
Fighting for peace is fighting for something worthwhile and vitally essential.
Srividya is a poet. Read her work at www.rumwrapt.blogspot.in
