A child battered, bruised by war,

A poor soul whose heart is sore,

Asks, what is peace?

To elucidate such a profound word is impossible,

Incredibly hard for a young mind to even fathom,

But we tell her,

Peace means love, unity and harmony

A world void of hatred, violence and jealousy

She has a stunned look on her face,

A flabbergasted expression,

With this she asks, does peace exist nowadays?

Has peace become a figment of our imagination?

Or in pursuit of peace, shall we perpetually be?

Has this become a distant reality?

With wars raging everywhere, does anybody really care?

On the road to progress,

A very grave issue we must address

So much around us we need to change,

Successes and setbacks,

We might face,

To restrain people from all that is wrong,

Is going to take awfully long,

And as we are the youth, global citizens of tomorrow,

We certainly cannot give up now and look away from all this sorrow

And so we tell the child looking at us with gleaming hopeful eyes,

To seek peace,

We must look deep within,

Within the bounds of our heart and soul,

Rests the power to bring about change

We must begin with our own deeds,

Our hatred must cease,

We must try to fulfil others’ needs,

To bring about peace

About The Poet

Aditi Naik is a Grade 12 student of The Winchester School. It is an international school teaching The National Curriculum for England. The school started in 2003 and currently operates primary year groups from Kindergarten onwards and will eventually grow to Year 13.

The academic year is from September to June. The school provides high quality affordable education to students of all nationalities. The elegant, spacious campus features aesthetically designed domes, arches and pyramids and high ceilings to create the perfect ambience for a multi-cultural setting.