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A HALF-HOUR IN OCTOBER by Geoffrey -. Hoffman

9/1/2010

Autumn: the steel-grey sky is washed with clouds
Floating in twilight. Sudden street-lamps flare,
To give the evening individuality.

This moment which is neither night nor day
Is magic, with a light that’s all its own.
Sharp edges blur: edges of concrete,
Edges of people. Shapes change contour,
Faces change character. Feet like shadows
Drift above the pavements’ lost reality.
Colours intensify. Shop lights become
Luminous orange, pumpkin yellow,
Almost-white which is the colour of
Uncoloured light, falling into the world.
Nothing we see reflects normality.
Twilight swims into the mind’s perception
From a dream universe,
Free from the undeniabilities
Of life: a self-contained continuum,
A half-hour that is stolen out of time.

ANOTHER WINTER by Geoffrey -. Hoffman

8/20/2009

And now two seasons play at dice,
And now grey winter’s iron hand
With a twisting of the wrist
Throws the six that autumn missed,
And takes the trophy of the land.
Winter, if it had its way,
Would win the universe at play,
And build a prison out of ice.

But underneath earth’s frozen rind
The tiny lives that will not die
Snuggle together to survive.
A robin on a leafless tree
Flutters and chatters cheerfully -
A touch of red in a world of snow,
With tiny, curious eyes aglow,
Warm, undefeated, and alive.
And as the robins, so live we
Though under human roofs we lie,
Safe from the white death in the sky.

ONCE by Geoffrey -. Hoffman

8/20/2009

Once when the years were calmer
And all of thought was green,
There was time for the shadow-lights of life
That flicker out, half-seen;
Time for the scent of new-mown grass,
The darkness of pine-fronds etched on the sky.
Now I watch the world through distorting glass,
And I long for an age gone by,
When time was asleep, but life was alive,
When the spinning years were not in haste -
I could watch tall reeds for a life-long hour,
And see the leaves of the lilies quiver,
And white swans dreaming on the river;
Or melt in the heart of a flower.

AT LAST by Geoffrey -. Hoffman

8/1/2010

Winter had iced the sap of life.
We hardly thought the time could come
When our forsythia bush would flame
With yellow, to become

A shelter for the patterned thrush,
Light chequering her speckled breast.
How daintily she pecks, and picks
Dry twiglets for her nest!

Last week the only leaves we saw
Were wrinkled brown; air seemed to freeze;
But now there is a golden light
And new green on the trees.

For now at last the year has turned,
And life is reaching to the sun.
Grey Winter’s bitter rains have failed,
And time’s long sleep is done.

Late amaryllis in its pot
Flushes into startling rose.
Blue garden-hyacinths uncurl.
Clean white the hawthorn glows.

Squirrels twitch up their tiny ears,
And little furry faces peep
Between the wild flowers in the wood,
Where unknown creatures creep.

Now all creation is awake -
Though strangely it appears asleep,
Lulled by the welcome sun, which gleams
Like burnished gold, to keep

The sky deep blue without a cloud
As if it were entranced to sing
A hymn to Summer on the wing:
Yet it is only Spring!

AT LAST by Geoffrey -. Hoffman

7/4/2010

Love by Geoffrey -. Hoffman

7/1/2008

I am asleep, and you sleep by my side,
A blessing, more real than reality.
Or do I dream? Such happiness surely
Can only be a dream. Then of us two,
Which is the dreamer, and which is the dream?

For you are my ideal; can I be yours?
How can perfection be a human trait?
I must admit the truth to my own self:
You are - I know that you are only real,
But I would rather have you than a dream.

You are a dream that is reality
And this is no mere fiction of the mind,
No trick of words, no play-about of thought,
For you are all that I desire on earth,
And heaven would not be heaven without you.

MOON SHADOWS by Geoffrey -. Hoffman

7/1/2008

I saw moon-coloured snow translate
A pavement into mystery.
Under the arch of midnight glowed
A meaning more then sight could see,
Haunting the strangely silent road
As if it would communicate
A vision words could not express.
Every twig on every tree
Was a black shadow edged with white,
A silhouette of loveliness
In a frame of lunar light;
And my perceiving soul took wing
To see snow-shadows scintillate,
And hear unbroken silence sing.

KEEP IN TOUCH by Geoffrey -. Hoffman

7/1/2008

Are you lost to me, daughter?

After the long swift years of growing up,
all children seize maturity;
but you have flown on wings of trembling steel
over grey Channel and unrolling Continent,
emigrated forever beyond the Aegean
and the un-aging Mediterranean Sea,
a thousand miles past understanding,
dwindling into memory.

Are you lost to me? Is your face only
an unchanging photograph, your voice only
an echo out of yesterday?
Are your warmth and kindness
vanished as memories vanish,
beyond knowledge, beyond contact, flown
to an unknown land on the other side of the sky?

Can you be lost to me, Julia?

The telephone shatters silence.
Across a thousand miles of unseen cable
over mountain ranges and dark valleys,
to my wondering disbelief
your voice speaks to me.
Tension snaps like an elastic band.
In finding you, I find myself again.

HAWES WATER by Geoffrey -. Hoffman

7/1/2008

Deep in the greenside that grows above Hawes Water,
Claire in red Wellingtons glows through the day.
Lithe as a pony, my pony-tailed daughter
Dances and prances and stumps her own way.

Leaving the paths where we plod and we shamble,
She leaps like a mountain sheep over wet rocks.
From tuft on to tussock she ambles and scrambles,
Then flops on a boulder and flaunts her white socks.

On ways where sheep wander, there wanders my lady -
Laughter in Wellingtons, tripping the trail.
At last where the lake lies and mountains are shady,
She sprawls in their shadow, spread out like a sail.

Yesterday, driven by drum-beats of thunder,
Stooping and groping along the long track,
She left here ungathered a sparkle of wonder -
A rose quartz whose memory now draws her back:

Lost in the grass on the path we have taken,
A marvel once found and no more to be seen;
A glimmer abandoned, a beauty forsaken,
A gem that is buried in shimmering green.

The jewel she seeks for, no search will discover.
This day that was heaven now seems years away.
The dreams of us both, the dark mountains will cover -
As evening shall silence the songs of the day.

BEAUTIFUL AMONG THE BUILDINGS by Geoffrey -. Hoffman

7/1/2008

How beautiful among the Buildings are the works of God!

Here papers whirl and curl until they sink into the slime;
But over old cracked paving stones and fallen flakes of lime,
Half-buried under rusted wire, the life that moves unseen
Comes creeping through chipped concrete, in a tiny touch of green.

Night sprawls among the broken lives that line the broken street:
The lonely and unpitied men whose waste is our defeat.
Men stagger from dank cellars; men, imprisoned in their cars,
Go roaring into sightlessness - unmindful of the stars.

A sudden morning wakes the bleak and crumbling roofs to blood,
And splashes violent colours from the windows and the mud.
Our lives are pressed together, men debased into a crowd:
Unseen above dark chimneys glows the whiteness of a cloud.

We cannot see the sunburst that is blazing through the world.
We live the night, we breathe the dark, our apathy lies curled
Like dragon wings about us, shrouding all our light away:
We cannot, or we will not, see the glory of the day.

Beyond the darkness of our lives, the sun shall rise in fire;
Trees sing, and shake their blossoms like a flame above the mire;
God walks upon the debris, and the star-flowers wake entwined:
For still there will be beauty, though the whole world should go blind.

And the Labourers are Sluggish by Geoffrey -. Hoffman

6/15/2008

When at last I come to die,
among those grieving there will stand
a small and yet significant band
who come because they’re duty-bound
by family solidarity;
distant connections who have been
drawn by the necessity
of being there and being seen.

These will compose their features and their minds
into a stone face of respect.
Dark suits will hide them from one another,
and their thoughts will be their own:

“The Lord’s our shepherd”
(we the weary sheep).
The dust returneth to the earth”
(but how the prayers drag on).

“As for man, his days are as grass”
(for the wind passeth overhead,
and there is a shortage of umbrellas).
“The day is short, and the work is great”
(and so much to do before tomorrow).

“Do you wish to look on the deceased?”
(No! He is not there!)
Only the form that housed my being,
only the outer husk remains.
The butterfly, the soul, has flown
or otherwise departed.
If any looked on me,
it would be a mask staring down at a mask,
neither of us truly there.

I have migrated, none of them knows whither,
and tomorrow they leave for Spain
and the sandy beaches and the paella and the sangria,
but I have gone ahead with the tickets
to a sunnier resort where there is no grief -
or so we hope.

Dance at Samantha's Wedding by Geoffrey -. Hoffman

6/15/2008

Lights beat
drums glow
senses change and interchange.
Floorboards leap
walls shake
shadows scream in green and gold.
Savage figures reel and wheel,
prehistoric instincts howl
as the human jungle wakes -

Dance-hall quivers
to the never-ending blare,
the never-changing rhythm
of pounding legs and tossing heads
in a glory of confusion.
Dark is light
and light is night;
spotlights flame blue, then flicker red,
arousing urges of the wild -

Pause:
what is primitive about the dance-hall?
There is no sin in whipped-up rhythm.
Only instincts without control
become savagery.

Dance then as the planets dance,
beat with the heart of the universe,
turn with burning sun and stars,
Reel with the wheeling galaxy -

A DREAM OF CAT AND MOUSE by Geoffrey -. Hoffman

6/11/2008

There lived in a house in Jerusalem
A tribe of little grey mice,
Believers in God; so pious,
They threw up their paws at vice.

Twice a day, day after day,
Morning and evening, chanting they prayed
As their father-mice decreed.
Undeterred and undismayed

By vacuum cleaners, tricks and traps:
In secret corners of the house,
Bobbing set bobbings, bowing set bows,
Reciting: “God is a mouse.”

In peace they lived. In peace they died:
A life of rest and repose.
And then Time’s lightning struck - a shock
To tweak a mouse’s nose:

On to that house in Jerusalem
Fell a bane more appalling than rats.
Like a shadow in a nightmare
There crept a plague of cats.

So very sweet they were at first,
With padded paws and silken fur,
So gentle and so kittenish,
With such a pleasant purr.

They too were pious, and believed
In God; but they were certain that
The surest surety they had
Was this: “God is a cat.”

And so between the cats and mice
This dispute rose into a roar:
An argument that made no sense,
Yet thundered into war.

Each cat and mouse was quite convinced
The others were temptations, sent
To try their faith. They must be wrong,
For they were different!

Before the turning of the year,
Before the autumn leaves burned red,
All for the sake of piety,
Those cats and mice were dead.

The Judge looked down impartially,
Murmuring a Réquiéscat.
Then with an open mind he asked,
“Which is mouse, and which is cat?”

************

This tale is not original; but I
Once dreamed a dream. I saw the Court on High
In session, and two angel advocates
Like tennis-players, racketing the ball
Of logic back and forth, with arguments
Both ways. It was not like a human Court:
Civil and criminal jurisdictions
Were mingled, and deliberately so,
With no accuser, no one to defend,
No one to win or lose the case, because
Its only object was to seek the truth.

One advocate (let’s call him ‘Counsel A’)
Submitted with a smile: “Some years ago
Geneticists on Earth suspected that
One chemical, produced by just one gene,
Might be a source of human empathy,
For less of it was found in criminals.
Perhaps more of it might produce a saint!
Defective, that gene generated less
Or none at all, and those who lacked it most
Lacked empathy the most. They did not feel
The sufferings of others, did not share
Their terrors, could not understand or care
What it was like for them to be attacked
Or robbed or raped. Lack of that chemical
Seemed to be present in most criminals;
And could it be that gene, that chemical,
That tilts the balance between war and peace?
If so, then more experiments might bring
An end to crime, perhaps an end to war.
Could it be so? It is just possible!
This only I request and recommend:
Experiment, research, experiment!”

The other Counsel (Counsel B) arose:
“There are grave dangers here,” he said and sighed.
“More than a single gene may be required
To yield that chemical. Often the genes
Must act in concert. Combinations can
Prove deadly. Several times men’s tinkering
With genes has given rise to cancer, and
To death; and, more than once, insertion of
A substance meant to cure an illness has
Resulted in a loss of zest for life,
Then suicide. How can geneticists
Be sure that an increase in chemicals
Aimed at reducing criminality
And even war, would not result in death,
Rendering the well-meaning scientist,
Morally at least, a murderer?”

Brimmed with impatience, Counsel A replied:
“Death might result - but war would cause more death.
Look at these cats and mice, all dead, all gone,
Extinct. What would they say, given the choice
Of going back in time? Would they prefer
Experiments that might bring death to some,
When the alternative was certain war?
Were there to be another war on Earth,
It could mean death for all humanity.
Is it not better to risk death for some,
Than by inaction to risk death for all?”

Then Counsel B leapt to its wings and said:
“Though one man’s murder save another’s life,
Can sin be justified by its results?
The risk is great. The chances of success - ”

As swift as thought, A’s answer volleyed back:
“One cannot be a murderer, moral or
Otherwise, without intent to kill - ”

The argument continued. How
It was resolved, I do not know. The dream
Was just a dream, and vanished with the light.

But you who read this, what do you conclude?

DANCE AT SAMANTHA’S WEDDING by Geoffrey -. Hoffman

5/9/2007

Utopia by Geoffrey -. Hoffman

5/28/2009

I

A visitor from the Third World,
Thirsty for London, drinks the sight
Of windows bright with luxury,
And miracles of light;

The steady opulence of cars,
Massive buildings, white with stone;
And everywhere and everywhere
People he has never known;

Curious alien restaurants
With strange delights to ravish taste,
Where prices are insane, and food
Is thrown out with the waste;

And then there is the Welfare State,
Wonder and backbone of this land -
Envy of his wounded world -
Where life extends a hand

To life; where every broken bleeding soul,
Sick in body or in mind,
May find new healing and new hope,
And be restored to humankind.

And there are parks like Paradise;
And to our visitor it seems
That he has left reality,
For the city of his dreams.

Past stations underground he whirls,
Through buried heavens, and must stare
To see the never-ceasing light -
And the beggars there.

Beggars in Heaven! Can there be
Hunger and rags and poverty
In this advanced democracy?
How can such things be?

II

Far from the gleam of stone and glass
Down side-roads where we dare not go,
Behind the glitter and the gloss,
Hides a world we fear to know.

In shabby dirty alleyways,
Poverty lives and is well.
Below the surface of this life,
The debtors live in Hell.

In little rooms, the little souls
That we so easily forget,
Still toil and struggle to survive;
And drown in debt.

It does not help to throw the blame
On their own weakness, or to say
That mounting waves of unpaid loans
Led them astray.

They see no way out of the maze
That circles them and hems them in.
They know and yet they fear to know,
That life’s a war they cannot win;

And if by accident we ever
Turn from the tourist-trodden way,
And in our innocence discover
The night that hides behind the day;

Then wandering, wondering through this city
That seems insensible as steel,
We must be shaken by a pity
That we never thought to feel.
Or if bewildered, unbelieving,
Following our aimless feet,
We stray to where life’s failures sleep
In cardboard boxes in the street,

Or if in hospital we learn
Of waiting lists, and feel the fear
Of those untended in their pain,
To whom each night seems like a year –

If in a modern school we see
A well-dressed pupil pull a knife
Against authority - an ape
That could not read to save its life –

We might so easily conclude
That every human hope is fled,
That there’s no pity among men,
And that the Welfare State is dead.

And yet its soul is not quite lost.
Though men forget, their dreams remain.
Still schools and hospitals exist;
And what has been can be again.

ALMOST by Geoffrey -. Hoffman

3/16/2008

In the stillness of an evening
When the summer’s half asleep,
Muted twilight fades to softness
As the first moon-shadows creep
Slowly past the open window,
Dreaming down the moonlit lawn
Scented with silence, breathing peace
To a night that needs no dawn.

Then the dusk-world seems to pause
As if by an illusion blessed,
For almost - almost - one would think
That all existence was at rest;
As if all quarrelling, all pain
Had ceased - no sorrow anywhere -
Nor outer war nor inner war
Could ever mar the world again.

If this illusion might remain,
That summer’s dream should never cease,
Then almost one might come to think
That all existence was at peace.

COMPASSION by Geoffrey -. Hoffman

3/16/2008

I share the pain of the whole feeling world:
The crying of a dog whose feet are crushed
By an oncoming car; the frenzy of
The hunted, and the hunchback’s twisted stare -
The bitterness and cruelty of life.

All who are lost and broken weep in me:
The wrinkled hag in the last frost of age,
Who weeps for beauty now a memory;
The sneerer who has lived upon his wits,
Whose spite is an unconscious cry for pity;
The failure who has bullied his way through;
The smoothly smiling who would sell himself.
I have the pain of all humanity
Burning my brain, and beating through the blood.

If only I could draw into myself
This agony of others, and so leave them free!
To hoop the kernelled pain into me with
A vice, to crush all grief and agony
Into my single self, dying to save humanity.

ONE KIND OF MP by Geoffrey -. Hoffman

3/16/2008

He is (one must admit) a wriggly thing,
And like most politicians he can sting.
Oiled with ambition, smiling, sweetly smooth,
With a fine talent for ignoring truth;
Adept at driving home the toaster’s prong;
In love with scandal; quick to pinpoint wrong
In others when it seems convenient,
No matter though they may be innocent;
Indignant, where it brings publicity;
Impartial in sublime duplicity.
But now this politician sprouts ideals;
Gasps at corruption; suddenly he feels
Compassion for the poor and unemployed
Whose votes he needs, whose silence he’s enjoyed.
From Ministry to Ministry he hops.
Like a keen axe, his rivals’ heads he lops;
And (grant him this) with skilled dexterity
Hinting in righteous insincerity
At incapacity about the throne,
And no one’s talent equal to his own,
At last, stands beaming at the head of all,
With hands outstretched to sceptre, crown and ball:
In his own eyes King Incorruptible,
Convinced that he is indispensable;
An honest statesman in his own conceit;
Risen through vice, triumphant through deceit;
A brilliant Parliamentary acrobat,
And singer of his own magnificat.

SUBURBAN LINE by Geoffrey -. Hoffman

3/16/2008

We live in an old world, a winter world,
Citied in pent-up energies, iron-linked
With the chattering smile of polite conversation.
Here is a man with blue-checked scarf obscuring
The book he tries to read; a woman’s glance
Towards her wedding ring; an ancient hat
Pushed back an instant to reveal no hair;
Glasses and pipes and shoes and clutter-bags,
Ashed with tobacco-flakes; an old man chewing
Into winkle-shells of thought, wrapped
In the grey smoke of memorials, made
Bitter with the jealousy of age;
A hundred symptoms of humanity
Crammed in a railway coach, like disused rags
In an old cupboard, cobwebbed in time’s loft.

SEARCH FOR THE CAUSE by Geoffrey -. Hoffman

3/16/2008

Is there a single cause of war?

Can all wars be the same,
Or does each war differ
From the last and from the next,
In more than in the means of killing?
Of course wars differ in their motivations
And in the mix and balance of their motivations,
From the terrorism of ideals
To the prejudice of patriotism;
From religions violent for piety,
To sickness for land, greed for glory,
Honour or hate or self-defence;
Even, for true or self-named heroes,
The exhilaration of violent risk.

But can there be one driving instinct
Behind every cause of war?

One possibility is the struggle for resources.
In early days the nations were in flux,
Migrating, seeking fertile territories,
Settling where they could.
But then the lands grew old,
And many resources were depleted.
Populations swelled and reached for living space
And fertile acres. Peoples moved
In search of warmer weather, greener fields.
Against this stood the human need
Of those already in possession
To defend their own. Competition
For sources of new wealth has often led
And still does lead to strife -
But can it be war’s only cause?
The civil wars of York and Lancaster
Were fought for power, not resources.
Nor had the madness of Bin Laden
Anything to do with seeking food.

Then why does war exist? Can there be
A motivation under our surface motivations,
A single cause beneath each cause we see?
If so, then somewhere in our psyche,
Or in those physical properties
That make us human, the explanation
Must exist.

I wonder if perhaps it is simply
That each of us instinctively
Rejects the stranger?
Of course, the impulse to defend one’s own
Must arouse distrust of the foreigner,
The potential enemy; but even beyond this,
Suspicion seems innate in the subconscious.
Can it be that in subconscious self-defence
Against the incomprehensible world around us
We build up walls
Between ourselves and those who prowl outside?
We see the world and, in the world we see,
Aliens walk on the other side of the street.
How much more foreign are they in a distant land
With a religion that is not our own,
An unfamiliar culture,
A different colour of the mind, or of the skin?
For so the logic runs:
They are not like us,
Therefore they are to be suspected;
If they are unlike us, they must be less than us,
Not fully human,
Encroaching on our rights, and therefore to be feared.
No wonder that, as soon as one apparent cause of war is over,
Another enemy appears: for there is always a horizon,
Always a stranger over the horizon,
A stranger to suspect.

Can this be the whole answer?
No, it cannot be the whole answer,
Only a part of it!
Human motivations are too varied,
Too complex for such simple solutions.
Suspicion cannot be the root
Of every cause of war,
For greed is not born of suspicion,
Nor religious mania, which justifies itself.
These force us to admit
That suspicion cannot be the single cause of war,
But is only one of the underlying impulses
That prompt us into violence.
What is there underneath mistrust,
That drives it to express itself in war?

Could it possibly be fear,
Conscious or subconscious fear
Of pirating by neighbours on our land,
Our rights, our property, our dignity, our lives?
For if so, what would follow from such fear? -
That we hate the people over the next hill,
For fear of what is different from ourselves.
Pre-emptive self-defence derives from fear,
Whether or not that fear is justified;
And there are fears inside us
That we scarcely recognise:
Some fight for God, fearing there is no God,
Some fight for honour, fearing that they have none.
And when we thrill at dicing with our lives,
Our courage hides a fear to be afraid.

Is this the answer,
This the underlying cause of war?
Instinctive rejection of the stranger,
Born of fear?
It explains much - but it does not explain
Wars for freedom, wars for self-defence,
The conquests of Napoleon and Alexander
Who fought for what they thought was glory.
Nor has it anything to do with wars
For greed or power or ideology.

Down goes that theory like a pack of cards!
Or is it so? Can there be anything to link
These motivations into one?
What lies at the root
Of instinctive suspicion and of fear?
For what subconscious underlying reason
Do men think it justified
To kill for freedom or for glory?

War is a recurring illness,
But every illness has a reason,
Viral or bacterial or otherwise.
What drives us into this disease?
What’s in our genes that must give birth to killing?
Is it a throwback to the primitive
That growls inside us, the caveman hunting,
The savage thirsty for blood,
The animal not yet adequately evolved?
Well yes, perhaps;
But what is the origin
Of this savagery?
Is war merely the distortion
Of a buried instinct
To hunt for and compete for food?
If so, why does it take shape
In struggles for religion or for freedom?

Another theory raises its perplexing head:
When we are born,
The first of all our instincts is to seek
Maternal sustenance and love; but as
We grow, we slowly gain awareness
Of the great world outside us, whose demands
Require us to adjust ourselves or it,
To prove ourselves against it, and to master it,
And be ourselves as individuals.
Circumstance drives us to react against
The world around us, to adjust to all
That is unknown or known; as teenage gangs
Against each other, or as rubber balls
Bouncing against each other and the tank
In which they lie, each one reacting to
The others, each adjusting to what lies
Outside itself. Is this not all one instinct,
This need to balance ourselves against the universe?

Could this be the single cause of war?
Oh, surely not! -
It derives from circumstance,
Not from the nature of humanity itself.

More doubts arise, and clamour for an answer:
Why do men fight, when women
Are less liable to fight?
But is that a valid question?
Is it more than an assumption based on prejudice
Or on the fact that, in the past,
Brute strength was needed to prevail in war?
Yet there were women leaders: Boudicca
Led her troops against the Romans; Britain
Under Thatcher fought the Falklands War;
And in our time, when strength is less a factor,
There are women soldiers, sailors, pilots.
When the lioness defends her cubs,
Is she not fiercer than the male?

What other explanation then remains
For the inborn human instinct to make war?
Can the male hormone, testosterone, be
A factor? Perhaps so, for it exists
In women also, though to a much less
Pronounced extent; and here at last we have
A possible answer to the still-unanswered question:
What turns competitiveness to violence?
Even male rabbits and male deer contain
Their version of the hormone, and although
They cannot organise to go to war,
They fight among themselves for mates.
Perhaps the one true cause of all our wars
Is this, no more, no less: testosterone.
If this is so,
Then let them know, who think they fight for God,
It is not God but hormones make them fight;
And those who think revenge drives them to war,
In fact are driven by testosterone.
All pride of nationhood, all hate of foes
Is but a symptom of testosterone.
Some wars are justified, but all are fought
Under the orders of testosterone.

That is a theory, and it may be true;
Or can the rogue be hiding in our genes?
We can be certain only about this:
Any one war may be triggered
By the necessity of a response
To circumstances that lie outside ourselves;
But they are only the trigger,
Not the ultimate cause.
Something inside us activates that trigger
And explodes us into violence.
Whether it results from our psychology
Or from our physical being,
It is innate in us.

Are we then condemned to war forever?
Whatever the true cause of war,
We know that only increased understanding
Could ever put an end to it.
To overcome it, we must fight ourselves.
They say that in the Andes there was once
A city, which for centuries had known
No war; and in the north of India
There was a people who had taken
The same path - as in our day the Swiss
Are setting out to do: so in the past
It has proved possible to escape
Our own barbarity, and to be more than human.
Nurture can overcome nature.
What has been done before
Can be done again.

Alas, that it takes only one side
To begin a war! To educate
All of humanity into new attitudes
Could be the only answer:
But is it possible? At least we know
That we do have the ability to reason;
And therefore surely we must have the power
To master instinct and control ourselves,
And rise above the need for violence?