A Poem for Peace by Jim Bellanca

How many years must pass before poets cease

to sing the fame of soldiers’ white cold bones

long bleached by blazing sun without release

to wrap strong arms around loved wives at home?

I do not wish to sing of arms and men

as did the poet gone centuries ago,

nor hail blood feuds like jealous brother Cain

whose angry hand blood-slayed twin Abel low.

Resolved to end that temptress Siren’s song

which cruel has left brave sailors dead,

their souls, like bold Aeneas, fated long

to sail eternal seas deep soaked blood-red,

I sing of olive twigs born high by doves

that drop strong seeds of lasting peace and love.

Bio

Jim Bellanca, a novice poet at 87, composes poems about his garden, environmental sustainability, peace, family, love, grief, and wry comments about senior living. He loves integrating his background with classics whenever he finds a fit. Witcraft, The Aerial Journey, Down In the Dirt, Sparks of Caliope, Westwood Quarterly, and a dozen additional publishers have accepted his poems. He lives in Lake Forest, Illinois.

Author's note

Since high school, I have loved the epic poems of Aeneas and Ulysses. When teaching, I made them central to my mythology unit, the first in my freshman English and Latin syllabi. In retrospect, when thinking on the current war events in Gaza and Ukraine and rereading other poems and novels on war and peace, I was struck by my early understanding of the poems as celebrations of heroism. This time, through the eyes of wives at home, I was struck with the antiwar subthemes, the painful consequences of the heroic “adventures”. Thus, the stance of this poem contrasts with the pro-war opening line of the Aeneid, a call to celebrate the Trojan war.