Here is a poem by Denise Levertov, an offering and a prayer for peace in all the headlines and courtrooms and battlefields and homes and churches and schoolyards and nooks and crannies of the world, where it is needed. Levertov was born in the UK, the daughter of a Russian Hasidic Jewish university professor. She writes of him: "My father's Hasidic ancestry, his being steeped in Jewish and Christian scholarship and mysticism, his fervour and eloquence as a preacher, were factors built into my cells". She knew she was a 'writer-person' as a young child and sent poems to T.S. Eliot when she was twelve. He replied with encouragement. She emigrated to the United States, and in her sixties converted to Christianity.

Making Peace

A voice from the dark called out,
"The poets must give us
imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar
imagination of disaster. Peace, not only
the absence of war."

But peace, like a poem,
is not there ahead of itself,
can't be imagined before it is made,
can't be known except
in the words of its making,
grammar of justice,
syntax of mutual aid.

A feeling towards it,
dimly sensing a rhythm, is all we have
until we begin to utter its metaphors,
learning them as we speak.

A line of peace might appear
if we restructured the sentence our lives are making,
revoked its reaffirmation of profit and power,
questioned our needs, allowed
long pauses. . . .

A cadence of peace might balance its weight
on that different fulcrum; peace, a presence,
an energy field more intense than war,
might pulse then,
stanza by stanza into the world,
each act of living
one of its words, each word
a vibration of light--facets
of the forming crystal.