Summary

A mother in a war-torn region grapples with explaining the concept of peace to her daughter who has never experienced it.

Abstract

The text is a poignant reflection on the struggle to convey the abstract and sensory aspects of peace to a child born into conflict. The mother, confronted with her daughter's innocent yet profound questions about how peace feels, tastes, and sounds, is overwhelmed by the task of describing something so foreign to her daughter's reality. The child's curiosity about peace is juxtaposed with the harsh truth of their life surrounded by war, highlighting the dissonance between the child's innocence and the world's harsh realities. The mother's internal conflict and emotional turmoil are palpable as she attempts to reconcile the idyllic notion of peace with the stark existence of war that engulfs them. The poem also critiques the hypocrisy of world leaders who speak of peace while profiting from the arms trade, further complicating the mother's attempt to explain peace to her child.

Opinions

The author suggests that the experience of peace is incomprehensible to those who have only known war, particularly for children.
There is a sense of frustration and helplessness expressed by the mother, who is unable to provide her daughter with a tangible understanding of peace.
The poem conveys a strong sense of irony and criticism towards world leaders who claim to pursue peace while perpetuating conflict through the arms industry.
The author implies that the current state of constant warfare renders the concept of peace almost mythical, raising questions about when, if ever, the poem's message will become irrelevant.
The child's perspective underscores the innocence lost in war and the tragic reality that an entire generation may grow up without knowing peace.

What’s Peace?

A child born and growing up in war asks*

Her questions are soft and sharp, wistful, that her mother cannot answer.

Her eyes shining with unshed tears that break my heart, she asks me,

How does it feel like?

Is it like the velvety soothing cool touch of your palm?

Holding that small hand in my hand,

I want to give an answer, but hesitate,

How do I describe “that”, what is no more, how?

When she asks me once again,

How does it taste, is it as sweet as sugar,

or salty like your kisses Mamma?

Kissing that quiver of a forgotten smile,

that’s begging for an answer,

I wonder,

Can you ever taste what that “was”!

Swallowing the mettle taste of war,

I try to hum a forgotten tune,

When another question, equally urgent, pleads me.

How does it sound? Is it sweet like your singing?”

Trying to listen for the forgotten sounds of silence,

I shut my eyes just to remember that what was before this,

but can’t reimagine how it was!

Yes, that what just does not make sense anymore!

Oh! Peace? World leaders talk of peace but deal in weapons!!

How can that be described to a child caught up and growing up in a war!

*Written in 2007, does this poem make sense?

And when would it? I wonder.