When Doves Cry

The quiet there is

in listening.

Peace could be

that grandeur, that dwelling

in majestic presence, attuned

to the great pulse.

What Levertov proposes here is greatly reassuring. In narration and in our ability to listen, which she locates in closest proximity to that ongoing, innermost story told by our own heartbeats, we can attain the "grandeur" that is peace.

"Those unexpected words of thanks"

Such soft-spoken glory is frequently present in the octogenarian poet Jean L. Connor's collection, A Cartography of Peace . She makes her case for peace with an armamentarium as humble as a bee's buzz, a snowfall's chill and the "hunger [and] shyness" of her garden's roses. Most of the poems in this remarkable first collection are simple lyrics, and yet they build toward a stubborn insistence on our reliance upon one another. (With whom else can we share the world's beauty and sorrow?) So peace is born not by choice or coercion but by necessity. With each of these poets, the leap of faith made through language -- in the hope that we will be heard and understood and what we have to say matters to others -- in turn engenders peace. Take, for example, Connor's poem "Possibly a Crow":

Something about the slow

wingbeat, the size, the print

of black against the low gray sky;

the bird's entering, but