Seattle Participants Nancy Peacock |
DIALOGUE AMONG CIVILIZATIONS THROUGH POETRY |
Soldier's Prayer "Four South Koreans still bearing the scars of old bullet wounds met with Pentagon officials yesterday, seeking an accounting and compensation nearly 50 years after they said U.S. troops came to their hamlet and killed hundreds of civilian refugees early in the Korean War....The Koreans flew to Washington from Cleveland, where they prayed together with three U.S. veterans in a church Tuesday." -- Seattle Post-Intelligencer, November 13, 1999 Dear Lord, You know I can't erase Their striking scars or fifty years of lies. I close my eyes to hear You, and embrace Their death-singed hearts, their trauma-focused lives. I pray they learn the truth and that its salt Helps them not simply blame and fault But understand how triggers in our hearts, Once pulled, can strafe a village silent, blood From corpses spreading pools of scarlet mud Through No Gun Ri. Once murder starts, It doesn't seem like murder. So we learn Again. Their scars, Lord, sting. Their stares still burn; Their hearts shout shrapnel and echo shots. Our marrow cures to wisdom. Somehow love survives Through bullet wounds, through eyes' black dots. -David D. Horowitz |
Seattle Participants Nancy Peacock |
PEACE Peace is a full moon with a whole night ahead of things you could do, but you don't have to. Peace is lying with a blanket covering your toes with the window closed as it cools on a March night; a glass of cold lemonade at midnight with two 1,000 mg. tabs of Vitamin C to keep the flu away; a dream that you slept with the man who lives next door and neither of you said a word about it to anyone; orange pekoe incense circling the room reminding you of Southern California groves before the housing developments uprooted them; the ocean chorus singing waves of love reaching for your feet as you walk the sand just out of reach but you could get wet if you wanted, you are that close; the man who says goodbye, wants you to stay longer, to cut him carrots and wipe the bottom of wet plates with a hand towel. He thinks he might be able to sleep next to you, to share a blanket or two. He won't get angry if you don't sleep all night. Peace is the full moon shining on his cheeks, his eyes fluttering in REM sleep when you rise to write. -Crysta Casey |
HEALING Come let us cry together join our tears to heal our common wound. Let us birth together across the rage through the terror. Let us feel together, savor the life of all our feelings and live. Let us breathe deep each other as we bare our pain weep, shiver and embrace as we hold the promise hidden far within. -Victor Hellberg |