by Sarah Klassen
How beautiful upon the mountain
are the feet of the messenger
who brings good news. (Isaiah 52:7)Not something separate. Not convenient
screens, a wall hastily fabricated
to keep a conflict's blaze contained.
Or the self safe.
Nor something hammered out at tables.
And never a moonlit evening,
incandescent sky, Pacific Ocean
on a breathless day. You might as well
wage peace as war. You'd have to stand
exposed at the crossroads of unguarded anger,
a presence, not an absence,
not gritting your teeth. Forcing your clenched hands
open. Your heart's hard core
and everything the stubborn mind contains
revealed. Disarmed
you become disarming:
on your unmaked face fear shines like diamonds.
Your wounded feet are radiant.
From Waging Peace: Poetry and Political Action, ed. Susan McMaster,
Ottawa: Penumbra Press, 2002.
