To be Against War is
Not enough: it is hardly a Beginning!²
We still have bits of country left in our hands,
So let’s Rest awhile, lest we lose what Remains.³
To practice Non-Violence is to divest passivity
Without arraying in vindictive force.⁴
We must Fight till we conquer
In ourselves—what causes war!⁵
We shall all their ammunition and feats of war
Defeat with plain Heroic magnitude of Mind!⁶
Love & Poetry win forever.
War is a great big lose. We are
Poets & Lovers & Winners!
How about you?⁷
We Dream we see bombers
Riding shotgun in the sky and
They are turning into Butterflies.⁸
The high ideals for which we kill one another—
Are empty & abstract substitutes for the
Unheeded Miracles that surround us!⁹
And the people in the streets shall
Dance round and round—and
Their guns & uniforms shall
Scatter to the ground!¹⁰
¹ Jorge Rebelo, Come Brother and Tell Me Your Life
² Muriel Rukeyser, The Life of Poetry
³ Ibrahim Tuqan tr. Salma Khadra Jayyusi, Lest We Lose
⁴ Martin Luther King Jr., Why We Can’t Wait
⁵ Marianne Moore, In Distrust of Merits
⁶ John Milton, Samson Agonistes
⁷ Philip Whalen, “Dear Mr. President”
⁸ Joni Mitchell, Woodstock
⁹ Alan Watts, This Is It
¹⁰ Ed McCurdy, Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream