“He does not come to coo.” <br /> —Gerard Manley Hopkins <br /> <br /> <br />Insomniac monkey-mind ponders the Dove, <br />Symbol not only of Peace but sexual <br />Love, the couple nestled and brooding. <br /> <br />After coupling, the human animal needs <br />The woman safe for nine months and more. <br />But the man after his turbulent minute or two <br /> <br />Is expendable. Usefully rash, reckless <br />For defense, in his void of redundancy <br />Willing to death and destruction. <br /> <br />Monkey-mind envies the male Dove <br />Who equally with the female secretes <br />Pigeon milk for the young from his throat. <br /> <br />For peace, send all human males between <br />Fourteen and twenty-five to school <br />On the Moon, or better yet Mars. <br /> <br />But women too are capable of Unpeace, <br />Yes, and we older men too, venom-throats. <br />Here’s a great comic who says on our journey <br /> <br />We choose one of two tributaries: the River <br />Of Peace, or the River of Productivity. <br />The current of Art he says runs not between <br /> <br />Banks with birdsong in the fragrant shadows— <br />No, an artist must follow the stinks and rapids <br />Of the branch that drives the millstones and dynamos. <br /> <br />Is peace merely a vacuum, the negative <br />Of creation, or the absence of war? <br />The teaching says Peace is a positive energy. <br /> <br />Still something in me resists that sweet milk, <br />My mind resembles my restless, inferior cousin <br />Who fires his shit in handfuls from his cage.<br /><br />Robert Pinsky<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/stupid-meditation-on-peace/
