To gladden the heart of a human being. To feed the
hungry. To help the afflicted. To lighten the sorrow of the sorrowful.
To remove the wrongs of the injured. That person is the most beloved of
God who does the most good to God's creatures.
~
Muhammad ~
Wildpeace
Not the peace of a
cease-fire not even the vision of the wolf and the lamb, but rather
as in the heart when the excitement is over and you can talk only about
a great weariness. I know that I know how to kill, that makes me an adult.
And my son plays with a toy gun that knows how to open and close its
eyes and say Mama. A peace without the big noise of beating swords into
ploughshares, without words, without the thud of the heavy rubber stamp:
let it be light, floating, like lazy white foam. A little rest for the
wounds - who speaks of healing? (And the howl of the orphans is passed from
one generation to the next, as in a relay race: the baton never falls.)
Let it come like
wildflowers, suddenly, because the field must have it: wildpeace.
~ Yehuda Amichai
~
(The Selected Poetry of Yehuda
Amichai, translated by Chana Bloch and Stephen Mitchell)
