Salute to Poets

Salute to Poets

By Daisaku Ikeda

There is a power in words,
an infinite power
to revive, restore
and make life blaze anew.

There is a life in poetry,
a limitless, eternal life
that can stir and arouse
a society to new vibrancy.

Poets!
Reflected in
your clear eyes
--like the still waters
of a lake--
we can see:
Clusters of people
fleeing in confusion
through a field of battle.
A wailing mother
tenderly cradling
a tiny corpse.
An infant,
starving, emaciated,
weakened and awaiting death.
The trembling fist
of a young boy,
who writhes beneath
the crushing weights of
discrimination and hate.

Poets!
Through your keen ears
we can hear,
as in an echoing valley:
The self-mocking sighs
of young people
filled with mistrust and isolation,
who sense no future
as they wander aimlessly
through thronging crowds.
The painful cry of Earth herself,
oceans and atmosphere polluted,
stripped and denuded of green,
bound by atomic burdens,
crying in distress
as she continues to revolve
on her grinding axis.
Poets!
Poets whose fine hearts
feel the full torment
of people's pain!

War, nuclear weapons,
environmental destruction,
discrimination,
the trampling of people's rights--
all these problems
are caused and created
by human beings.
Thus there is
no misery or cruelty
beyond our power
as humans
to resolve.

All people, everyone,
crave and thirst
for peace,
everyone seeks and pursues
the goal of happiness.

All people
hold within themselves,
in their hearts,
a golden sun
that can brightly light their own lives
and shed far and wide
warm and brilliant beams
of friendship and fraternity.
This inner luster
of life itself
is the ultimate
font and source
of new creation.

Poets!
Now is the time
to raise your voices,
to call forth and awaken
the sun sleeping
in the hearts of people
the world over.

Society is awash
with false discourse;
with propaganda
that incites
xenophobic rejection;
with low and ugly rumor
whose sole purpose is
to degrade and demean;
with shrieked abuse
that destroys dignity,
tearing into the heart
like a lethal blade.

This flood
of deceptive, vacuous
and violent language
has caused people
to treat all words and language
as suspect.
Words are
the human heart
and this doubt
has driven people
into the dark and rampant isolation
of cynicism and fear,
distrusting everything
including society
and humanity itself.

Ah, poets!
Now is the time
to use the words
of compassion and truth,
the words of universal justice
that roil and seethe within your heart,
to use these words to dispel
the dark and heavy clouds
of language laden with
false and evil intent,
to stir new winds
of hope and courage,
to bring about a
new and golden dawn!

Mahatma Gandhi declared:
"A poet is one who can call forth
the good latent in the human breast."

Ah! The innumerable
cruel fissures that split
and divide our
blue planet.
Divisions based
on differences
of ideology,
of state,
of national and
ethnic identity,
of religion,
of class.

The absurd, horrific
and repeated reality
of people
turned against people,
viciously discriminating,
resenting, wrangling
and hating each other.

The deepest evil,
the ultimate source
of all conflict and tragedy,
is the dividing heart.
Preoccupied with difference,
it drives people
to reject and exclude
others.

But this very Earth,
this lovely planet,
is a garden rich
with the full and gorgeous
blossoming
of diversity.

It is difference
above all
that makes each
flowering tree
--cherry, plum, peach and damson--
uniquely valuable.
Difference is
the quality that
enables us
to learn from each other,
to complement and fulfill each other,
to respect and honor each other.

Poets!
Let us throw new bridges
across the gulfs dividing
people's hearts!
With the cries that issue
from your soul
turn the gears of history:
away from suspicion and toward trust,
from divisiveness to harmony,
from war to peace.

We are all human beings.
The poetic spirit
beats and throbs
in our veins!

All people are in fact
sisters and brothers
capable of mutual love,
of coming together
in harmonious unity.

All people
have the right
to live out their lives
in happiness and dignity.
Poets, arise!
Wait for no one,
but stand up resolute
and alone!

With our words
and with our actions,
let us till and turn
the sprawling expanse,
the desert aridity
of people's hearts.

The voice of the poet
who has chosen to stand alone
calls out to and resounds with
the voice of another
self-sufficient poet.
A single ripple
elicits ten thousand waves.

When our cries of justice
swell to a symphony
extolling humanity and life
and when its resonant tones
reach all corners of the Earth,
wrapping and cradling it . . .

Then the deep red glory,
the dawning sun
of peace for all people everywhere,
will rise and lift
into the sky.

Source: http://www.sgiquarterly.org/essay2008Jan-1.html