Peace poetry: no borders exist, dividing up the sky

Girl offers peace prayers at launch of peace lanterns — Peace Prayer cc. WILPF

It seems better to remember peace than dwell on war. These verses are examples of poetry from around the world which express an aspiration for peace.

It was our hope
That all the world’s oceans
Be joined in peace
So why do the winds and waves
Now rise up in angry rage?

No lines exist
Which sector off the sky
So high above
Though the nations of this earth
Are all bound by borders.

I still remember those days of peace —
Twenty years among mountains and forests,
The pure stream running past my yard,
The caves and valleys at my door.

I dream
of a wave of peace

A giant wave
Reaching beyond the fences
Moving deep inside

A wonderful wave
Drenching all the minds
Penetrating deep in hearts
Changing souls forever

Why can’t you free yourselves from the
Bondage of hatred and let peace rain
For, where there is peace, there is great love
Where there is peace, one need not struggle and search for justice
Where there is peace, love and justice,
Freedom flows like a rain, where freedom lives there is development.
So free yourself.

When it is peace, then we may view again
With new-won eyes each other’s truer form
And wonder. Grown more loving-kind and warm
We’ll grasp firm hands and laugh at the old pain,
When it is peace. But until peace, the storm,
The darkness and the thunder and the rain.

Don’t hate anyone
Place everyone in your heart
Respect everyone

Life is like a journey,
taken on a train
With a pair of travellers
at each windowpane.
I may sit beside you
all the journey through,
Or I may sit elsewhere,
never knowing you.
But if fate should make me
sit by your side,
Let’s be pleasant travellers;
it’s so short a ride.