Red Cross Peace Poetry from The Year of The Poet (Vol 73)
Featured in The Year of the Poet January, 2020 Volume 73.
This year the focus of the The Year of the Poet is on Noble Peace Prize winners. Each month we will write poetry and thoughts based on responses to the lives and achievements of Peace Prize winners.
A new decade dawns with poetry and wisdom. This is our collective poetry posse’s seventh year publishing The Year of The Poet with a book a month from Inner Child Press. It has been our great privilege to share much beauty and soothe pain with words of insight and laughter, words that rhythm and dance across the page, bouncing off into the reader’s heart.
Each year we contemplate a theme, delving into ideas, finding words to describe feelings, conflicts, relationships and growth. This year may our vision be 20–20 as we contemplate the words and ideas of Nobel Peace Prize winners. And may we share our understanding of the world and how-to live-in peace with each other in a way that goes deep and touches what is real, raw, powerful and magnificent.
There are as many ways to win a Nobel Peace Prize as there are ways to find peace in this world. In January, we celebrate the 1901 prize shared by two Europeans: Jean Henry Dunant (Swiss) and Frédéric Passy (French). Dunant found peace in compassion for the wounded of all nations on all sides of each war. He founded the Red Cross. Passy felt that peace is found in economic justice and free trade. He was dubbed the “dean” of the international peace movement.
A shout out to Martin Luther King, Jr. who would have been 91 this month and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 for his non-violent opposition to discrimination.
This year of poetry is an opportunity to think about what we have learned from world history and our own personal experiences of peace, compassion, security and justice. It is an opportunity to contemplate how we respond to conflict, injustice and violence, how it changes us and how we grow in the aftermath of life’s challenges.
May we all find peace in poetry and in the day to day of life in 2020 wherever in the world we find ourselves. Happy New Year.
Jean Henry Dunant
A small book
a memory of solferino
an unknown man his ideas destine for greatness
describes the battle itself
the battlefield after the bloody fight
the chaotic disorder
sharing unspeakable despair
and the story of the efforts
to care for the wounded
result in a plan
Nations of the world
provide care for wartime wounded
train volunteers to nurse
all equally this side and that
Henry Dunant founding the Red Cross
nudging twelve nations to sign the Geneva Convention
under a red cross on a field of white
for which the Swiss Dunant shared
in the 1901 Nobel Peace Prize
Aftermath
Some achieve greatness in the aftermath
when the war
divorce
election is done
decided
settled
Like Jean Henry Dunant
founding the Red Cross
in the aftermath of the battle of Solferino
winning the 1901 Nobel Peace Prize
remembered
long after the battle forgotten
forged in blood and chaos
emerging under a red cross
on a protective white field
Surrounded by peace in the languages
of his native Switzerland frieden
friede fréda fridde
fridn sholem paix
paz pas patz
pace paas péx
pasch and kotor
Peace and Free Trade
Frédéric Passy dubbed the “dean”
of the international peace movement
saw free trade as a pathway to peace
over 200 years ago
before the conflict between
a united Sweden and Norway peaked
before World War I and World War II
before the current trade wars
bringing the question
what have we learned?
in 200 years about fairness compassion
and creating peace out of goods
Originally published in The Year of The Poet (Vol 73) at http://www.innerchildpress.com/the-year-of-the-poet.php on January 1, 2020.
