Accord
A poem
There is a tranquil spot, where once peace rested
Curtained behind palisades of moss and ivy
Softly sounding—
The busy burbles of some urgent brook
Slave to the imperative of nature
Dashing the flow to pearls against the rocks
Punctuated with the shrill approval
Of birdsong
Here I could lay aside my mask of villainy
Or discard the adversarial voice
That narrates your thoughts of me
I could show its soft borders
To the cynical legions
That know only the whir of a drone on terminal approach
Perhaps there’s room to welcome
The faces old and young
Too tired to be terrified anymore
By the crack of shells or bullets
It would be a mistake to lock out
The quarrelsome mobs
Marshalling their punitive repudiations
And scathing rebuttals
No one is ever hunted there, nor dispossessed
No insults or deprecations are hurled
Projectiles cast in anger
Nor will I hurt you again, with careless words
No violence will be committed by vengeful hands
Eyes will not survey neighboring lands
We will let peace prevail here
I will stand watch on this ground
With the bitter knowledge
That sometimes conflict
Is a necessary aspect of peace
What stays with me is how this poem refuses to treat peace as innocence. It understands it instead as something guarded by those who have already known its fracture.
The pastoral and the violent sit side by side here, not for contrast, but because history doesn’t separate them cleanly. Even the idea of “laying aside a mask” feels like an ache for a self not shaped by conflict.
And that final turn, where conflict is named as part of peace, doesn’t read as justification, but as grief. A recognition that the world rarely allows purity, only responsibility
Even peace contains conflict. It's strange but very true. Even when things are going well in our day-to-day lives, there is conflict lying there, too. Brilliant stuff.