Peace

A Milestone Towards Peace

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When people across borders
Stand crossing swords at each other
Wanting peace, but harbouring war and suspicion.
When the drag of mundane life pulls
They live with the constant fear of annihilation
There are brothers, sisters, uncles and aunts
Little girls with colourful ribbons,
Cherubic boys with chubby cheeks.
Rivers that flow and mountains that soar
Animals that walk through forest corridors
Birds that migrate from country to country
Fish that swim in international waters
The desert insects burrow deep tunnels
Between India and Pakistan
Burma and Bangladesh.
Trees that grow tall, spread out their green canopy
Giving shade for life sans borders
The pigeons, olives and colourful balloons
Just fly in the air, the way they like
All these don't talk of war
And so they don't about peace too.
They just exist - in peace and harmony.
And you know we humans call ourselves
The most superior of these all.
We have knowledge - we create strife
We have technology - we make weapons
We know to talk - and we engage in wordy duels
We invented money, only to store and hoard
We know cultivation and we meddle with nature.
Are we superior indeed men and women
From these pigeons, olives and colourful balloons,
That just fly and fly in peaceful amity
Not confronting, not treading on each others' path
Like the water that flows around boulders
Or the slim bamboo that bends to the wind.
We are not teachers, but meek students
Who have to learn from nature's lap
How to live, let live
How to give and take
How to just be in absolute
Harmony, Silence and Peace.
- Akhilananda Bharati.