PART V:
  CONTEMPORARY PEACE POETRY

 

Click the picture to open the e-book or to download it and read the poems offline. (Size: 532 Kb) The 44 poems include international peace poetry presented at the IFLAC - RABIN Conference in London (March, 2002), peace poems from Israel, and Ada Aharoni's 11 "Leave Lebanon in Peace" poems, inspired by letters written by Israeli soldiers while in Lebanon. Text file. The same poems organized as a plain web page.   Bach in Beyrut A moment of harmony in Beyrut - We suddenly heard from one of the houses Bach music beautifully played - The whole company stopped to hear the music. The pianist played beautifully and the whole company stopped and listened to the exquisite harmony. The bombs did not succeed to stop us - but a sixteen year old girl playing Bach music stopped us! (From "Leave Lebanon in Peace". Copyright 2001 Ada Aharoni.)   Through a Glass Darkly smoke mirrors and pink rabbit ears deadly game of croquet played on a field flooded by tears — comes from above a scream for the Dead and the red queen herself shouts off with their heads It's chaos so clear So neatly defined It's children's worst fear World gone out of its mind (copyright 2002 Georgia Jones)

IN MEMORIUM Yehuda Amichai 1924-2002 IFLAC members mourn the passing away of the great Israeli Laureate Peace Poet - Yehuda Amichai. When I heard Yehuda Amichai read his Peace Poems, his silent, powerful protest against war, I deeply identified with him and I felt a deep urge to translate them into English. I sent him the translations and when we met again, he said he loved them. Some of the translations have been published in the London "Jewish Chronicle" and elsewhere. Yehuda Amichai, like the British Peace Poet, Wilfred Owen, is a universal poet in his love of humanity and his search for a world beyond War. Ada Aharoni

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