Walt Whitman:
I would be the boldest and truest
being of the universe.
I know that
with the coming
of each new day,
I have prayed
and taken action
for the peace of the world.
Thus my heart
is fulfilled and satisfied.
Like the stars
that sparkle
in the highest reaches,
I know that I have won.
Peace is humanity’s greatest,
most solemn undertaking.
While the limitless progress
of scientific advance
has enhanced the means
of killing people,
still the promise
of a majestic peace,
the kind required for us
to live humanely
—the determination
to realize such a peace
in perpetuity—
remains unfulfilled.
Albert Einstein
stated that human beings must
continue to fight.
But they must fight
for something whose value
justifies the struggle.
And he declared that
their “arms” should be
“weapons of the spirit.”
* * *
Vacant stares fiied
on piteous, desolate ruin.
For what purpose
have we lived?
To what end
this violent strife?
The only response
is the howling
of an infinitely empty wind.
The unsound nature
of those who
continue to bring
this sorrow and suffering
to people like us
—we who have had
no say whatsoever
in any of this—
it is this nature
that we must absolutely
transform and change.
The utter brutality
that can casually
rob others of life!
The madness and folly of power
pillaging the last scraps
of happiness.
Demonic authority
that strips everything
from those honest,
good-natured people
who have exerted
every effort to live,
carrying in their hearts hope
for the simple
happiness of spring.
In the contemptuous glare
that does not recognize
people as people,
the human heart is absent;
there is only something
monstrous and bestial.
For both victor
and vanquished,
war leaves only
a sense of endless futility.
Whose responsibility is this?
The answer should be clear,
and yet it is not.
