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Writings for Peace

Bringing you poetry and prose from around the world to reflect the broader humanitarian mission of Peace Partners. It is our hope to provide a safe space for compassion, empathy, and insight into our shared want for a more peaceful society. Here we showcase work from familiar names and those too-long overlooked by history, as well as the new and emerging voices of today.

OLYMPIAN SPIRIT

27/7/2021

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​The 2020 Tokyo Olympics are officially underway and, while there’s rightful debate over its timing and efficacy, there is also no denying the Olympian’s individual brilliance, or the spirit of determination defining these elite athletes. 

At its best, the Olympic Games provide an awe-inspiring display of physical performance and technique, of super-human speed and acrobatic agility and not only that - they also serve as a window of potential; to heal the political divides of time through this universal language of sport.
​
The ancient games were a display of body and mind alike, with literary events and recitals peppering each event. Consider, for example, Pindar’s “The First Olympic Ode”, one of a select few poems to survive all these centuries past:


Chief is water of the elements; gold too, amid ennobling wealth, shines eminent, like fire, ​​
flaming in the night: but my soul, if thou desire to blazon combats, seek not, during day, ​​​
any brilliant star, wheeling through the desert air, more radiant than the sun: neither any ​​​
list, more excellent than Olympia's, (whence, to resound Saturn's son, proceeds the song
​​of fame, framed by the poets' skill) can we speak, coming to the wealthy, happy mansion ​​
of Hiero.


In fact Pindar, like so many poets of his day, was commissioned to write in celebration of one’s great victory. This particular poem commemorates Pherenikos, a winning racehorse owned by Hieron, ruler of Syracuse and a patron of the poet.

There is so much to unpack in Pindar’s poem; far beyond the call to praise an individual horse, it reflects the cultural dynamics of the day, and here we see the invaluable function of art to bear witness and catalogue these moments in time.

Indeed, literature itself provides a great, wide open space to pick apart the athletic psyche, and no where is this more evident than in Japanese novelist Haruki Murikami’s memoir, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, whose lengthy exploration into the writer’s passion for long-distance running serves as a kind of meditation on life itself, and a fitting passage to honour this year’s host country:

For me, running is both exercise and a metaphor. Running day after day, piling up
the ​​​races, bit by bit I raise the bar, and by clearing each level I elevate myself. At least that’swhy I’ve put in the effort day after day: to raise my own level. I’m no great runner, by any ​​means. I’m at an ordinary – or perhaps more like mediocre – level. But that’s not
the point. ​​ The point is whether or not I improved over yesterday. In long-distance running the only ​​​opponent you have to beat is yourself, the way you used to be.

words: Sean Morrissey
photo: Unsplash Erik Zunder

  

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For the TravelLer

14/7/2021

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From Ellen Bryant Voigt’s tropical fantasy to Adélia Prado’s meditations on a rose, there is little doubt of our great curiosity and humanity’s pull toward adventure; that no matter the physical confines of our present, the mind will always find its way toward the light of an open road.
​As we mark another entry in our staycation travelogue, some guiding words from the Irish poet and philosopher John O’Donohue, whose poem “For the Traveller” serves as a gentle reminder that wherever you go, there you are. O’Donohue speaks to the intrepid traveller in us all, for whom every step and stride is another leap into space. Every stanza is brimming with gratitude and offers a most spiritual view of our singular journey in time, sprinkling his lived wisdom along the way.
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For the Traveller

Every time you leave home,
Another road takes you
Into a world you were never in.

New strangers on other paths await.
New places that have never seen you
​Will startle a little at your entry.
Old places that know you well
Will pretend nothing
Changed since your last visit.

When you travel, you find yourself
Alone in a different way,
More attentive now
To the self you bring along,
Your more subtle eye watching
You abroad; and how what meets you
Touches that part of the heart
That lies low at home:

How you unexpectedly attune
To the timbre in some voice,
Opening in conversation
You want to take in
To where your longing
Has pressed hard enough
Inward, on some unsaid dark,
To create a crystal of insight
You could not have known
You needed
To illuminate
Your way.

When you travel,
A new silence
Goes with you,
And if you listen,
You will hear
What your heart would
Love to say.

A journey can become a sacred thing:
Make sure, before you go,
To take the time
To bless your going forth,
To free your heart of ballast
So that the compass of your soul
Might direct you toward
The territories of spirit
Where you will discover
More of your hidden life,
And the urgencies
That deserve to claim you.
​

May you travel in an awakened way,
Gathered wisely into your inner ground;
That you may not waste the invitations
Which wait along the way to transform you.

May you travel safely, arrive refreshed,
And live your time away to its fullest;
Return home more enriched, and free
To balance the gift of days which call you
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  • Home
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