peace is a woman and a mother
saying peace
Peace Is A Woman and A Mother
How do you know
peace is a woman?
I know, for I met her yesterday
on my winding way
to the world’s fare.
She had such a sorrowful face
just like a golden flower faded
before her prime.
I asked her why
she was so sad?
She told me her baby
was killed in Auschwitz,
her daughter in Hiroshima
and her sons in Vietnam, India, Pakistan,
Ireland, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon,
Bosnia, Rwanda and Chechnya.
All the rest of her children, she said,
are on the nuclear
black-list of the dead,
all the rest, unless –
the whole world understands
that Peace is a Woman.
A thousand candles then lit
in her starry eyes, and I saw –
Peace is indeed a pregnant woman,
Peace is a mother.
showing peace
La Piéta des Roms by Johann Walter Bantz on Unsplash
doing peace
The theme today is global peace
This poem by the Egyptian Israeli poet Ada Aharoni helps us ask: what is global peace? It also helps us to think about how gender relates to global peace. Women are affected by wars in particular ways, and their contribution towards peace is significant. In our description for this theme, we say "Global Peace is peace between nations, and between people living within nations, whatever their identity. It is sometimes referred to as world peace, and implies the ending of war and the coming of social justice, freedom and equality for all." There are many ways that people could define global peace. There are also many ways that it could be defined through a gender lens.
what does global peace mean to you?
is gender important in this definition?
why is it important to acknowledge the equality of all identities?
how does this poem make you feel?
do you know the conflicts that she mentions? Look up any that you don't know.
how do you feel about the image as a representation of peace?