Wildpeace

 

Not cease-fire peace,

not image of wolf and lamb,

just weary words,

strain loosing.                                                                            

 

Not rubber-stamp peace

not the din of forging ploughs,

just words spent,

absence foaming.

 

Not healing peace,

not the lion’s quiet grazing,

just silence,

wounds resting.

 

      Call ‘Mummy, look’

      when the toy guns point

      and the dolls tip

      to close their eyes,

 

      until knowing

      we know how to kill,

      makes us sure

      we are adults now,

 

      and orphans’ cries

      are the baton passing

      deftly from our time

      to the next.

 

Wildflowers must come

unexpectedly

to our waste ground,

so come wild-peace.

 

The poem responds to one by Yehuda Amichai (translated by Chana Bloch and Stephen Mitchell) included in U2's Days of Ash released on Ash Wednedsay.  U2 laments the deaths of Renee Good (in the United States), Awdah Hathaleen (in the West Bank) and Sarina Esmailzadah (in Iran), hinting at Christian, Jewish and Muslim perpetrators who are distanced from what Bono identifies as ‘the moral force of Judaism that helped shape Western civilisation’.  

 

The picture was taken in Lincoln Cathedral's Ringers' Chapel.