Wednesday, June 11, 2008

A QUATERN ABOUT AN ELUSIVE PEACE

Hi guys,

My good Swede friend, Peter, sent this clip to me two days ago. Please check it out.



Here's a quatern for you. It is one of the poems included in my upcoming book, 150+1 Poems on THE EXPERIMENTAL DASANG (Hey Poem) and 45 OTHER POETRY FORMS: An Anthology. (Note: Quatern is a French poetry form composed of 4 quatrains (4-line verses). It's unique feature is the repetition of the first line of the first quatrain in all succeeding verses.)

PEACE, WHY ARE YOU SO ELUSIVE?

Peace, why are you so elusive?
Like a bird chirping melody
Yet so far to hear you clearly
And translate your notes correctly.

We love to give you sweet embrace
Peace, why are you so elusive?
You flap your wings; you exude grace
White plumes flaunt to attract and tease.

We think of you day in and out
Hope olive branch is dropped en route.
Peace, why are you so elusive?
Guileless victims now in a clout.

Everyone's dreaming to hold you
Hoping never to let you go
Alas! we wake up without you.
Peace, why are you so elusive?

(c)2007 edmund melig industan

Peace is achievable, but it is so sad that, obviously, it is difficult for mankind to achieve. Why? Is it because...
1) People, since time immemorial, love conflict? The Biblical Cain, out of jealousy, ended up killing his twin sibling, Abel.
2) People are so competitive? Generally, we want to outdo and outsmart others. We are like a snake who crawls cleverly to hiss and snap at somebody, then, slithers quietly away as if it hasn't done anything wrong.
3) People, as economic men, are so greedy that we will resort to staging a war to maximize our benefits of the scarce resources at the expense of others? Along the way, we victimize the innocents. While functional theorists see society as interdependent and consensual, conflict theorists see society in the arena of war, fighting for power.
4) People are coward to accept their weakness, that we use conflict as a defense mechanism?
5) It is the end time? (Matthew 24:1-14; Mark 13:5-11)
6) The aging world is so rotten that it has to be crushed and ruined completely for a new world to come and evolve? ( Revelation 21:1-5)

Let me hear from you, my friend. SHALOM! And I mean it from the bottom of my heart. Or maybe man's heart is bottomless? We communicate peace, but actually, it is just at the surface to cover our wickedness.

3 comments:

GALI Ed Writes said...

actually the essence of the poem is to solicit for response or perhaps , better put, to provoke literary audience into thinking.It is important to note that rhetorical questions "where is peace?" plays a crucial role in the poetry and of course peace is addressed like as if he is human. If we were to give it a theological proposition, it will be right to say that Jesus has been referred to as the Prince of Peace, theologically, HE is in charge or in custody of peace even in the face of war and persecution.His message is a message of peace and not of revenge, of forgiveness and perseverance and not retaliations, for violence beget violence. Well if the poet is asking for peace he is indirectly proving a point that humanity is degrading and needs a redemption because a society without peace is ruled by chaos and chaos is synonymous to lawlessness.However humanity is not suppose to struggle for peace because according to the first verse it looked like peace is the one running away from us when in the true sense we are the one responsible for the availability of peace.United Nations,African Union, all peace keeping forces in war torn countries will tell you they are doing as much as they can to main peace and foster dialogue between war faring factions.Peace is not elusive, it is always there in our heart it is just that we don't believe the peace is the answer to our greedy desire.

GALI Ed Writes said...

Hi guys,

Just to let you know that the comment,'...actually the essence of the poem is to solicit for response...' was from a good friend, who is affiliated with Quake Media of So. Africa. It was sent as a gmail. I decided to copy and paste it in my blog, because I found it a very good analysis to the poem. Also, I was so glad that my friend sufficiently addressed the Theological issue, which I tried to throw at the readers.

Thank you very much, brother.

Edmund

GALI Ed Writes said...

Dominic of Malaysia left me a comment on my wall:

"hey thanks for the msg. appreciate it! how have you been? and thanks also for sharing your poems. they're very lovely, read them and let them melt into my heart. very well written. keep it up :)"

............
Thanks Dominic.