A poem about peace
Rev Geoff Haworth shares a poem by Alison Drummond:
NEW WORLD TO OLD
What does it mean to you, this thing called peace?
Rest from the dark surf-thunder of the guns
Respite from sweat of fear on moonlit nights
Slipping in that pale hour from sleep edge into sleep
Suspended in a dream?
Time in the company of old and kindly books
That know no frontier, by the witched alchemy
Of burning wood?
Do you greet springtime with a sharper ache
Who know the beauty of this world can die?
I cannot see with my sun-blinded eyes
Green shade to arid crater in a night.
I have not held with suffocated heart
The crossroads of the world.
Not mine the searing splendour of that flame,
That light an age fraught with unending night.
You gave your mortal life that I might laugh
Among my fern, beside my shouldering seas –
There are worse ills than death, worse pangs than fear’s.
You spared me these.
- Alison Drummond
