Peace Sonnet Chain #6: Pascale Petit

Hope may nest, its inkwell mean more than any Grail
when a Palestine sunbird lines her home with down

from an angel’s fontanelle. When, instead of bombs,
white storks land on roofs and build their nests

from salvaged olive sprigs, while in the burnt groves
a dove finds one green vowel. Even the raven brings his gift

of holy quills when the soldiers come, showers them
with stardust from his feathers, so they see their humanity

and harm no one. I watch all this with barbed wire lashes –
on each spike a shrike has impaled hope. Yet

I know that sparrows nest under a stork’s eyrie,
keep mosquitoes of shrapnel from their hosts’ chicks.

The commonest bird can be the most lyrical, when
she perches on a warhead that hatches only song.

Peace Sonnet Chain #5 : Ian Duhig

Steeped in the humanity they’re stripped of . . .
her last words are my first but take my breath.
Another sonnet prompts: talking of love . . .
Love’s stone, Wolfram’s Kaaba Grail, fell to earth
with angels neutral in God’s civil war.

Between these lines, another thing with feathers
flies through no man’s land to guide here Feirefiz,
Parzival’s bonnie Saracen half-brother

whose skin Wolfram likened to words on vellum.
I’d suggest his text was spelling peace, 
but that’s a stretch enough to split a drum.

Yet hope may nest in some page’s white space,
waiting for the language that makes war fail.
Its inkwell would mean more than any Grail.

The best thing one can be is an alibi
               for light and darkness
where the last words are your first  – ‘The Beginning of Poetry’, Adonis, trans. Mattawa

Fighting you, I was fighting myself – Parzival toFeirefiz, ‘Parzifal’, Wolfram von Eschenbach

War is what happens when language fails – Margaret Atwood

Peace Sonnet Chain #4 : Naush Sabah

The sky cracks in a water-filled crater,
phosphor-flash over hulking bulldozer.
Past high walls and old hills, developers
sketch new houses over mass graves,
as the strip’s measured by rows of bodies,
national monuments to life, marked by stones
on the highway’s central reservation,
separating the lanes from death to death.
These two mounds mark ten years of trying,
twin mirrors broken in their birthright’s earth.
But a mother’s faith is unbreakable,
forged in torn flesh and sleep deprivation.
Every man and boy is a mother here,
Steeped in the humanity they’re stripped of.

Peace Sonnet Chain #3 : Andy Jackson

The dead are dead and cannot speak in court,
though they will submit testimonials
in tongues of smoke. Another news report
shows residences smashed to stony hills
as a helmeted war correspondent
wrangles a synopsis of the truth. Night
is exchanged for day; another bombed-out
train of foundlings shuffle towards the light.
The link goes down; they’re jamming satellites
again, though who they are is not made clear.
There may be a reckoning of the right
to defend oneself, but not now, not here.
Protocols say Act fast, deny later.
The sky cracks in a water-filled crater.

Peace Sonnet Chain #2 : Anja Konig

Untitled

Here is a quiet sky with nothing falling
but the leaves, here we have houses,
bread (for now). So little do we know
how huge a gift we have received.
Not far away people scan the sky for daily death,
Pray for a night’s respite, a mother’s life.
There is no god to answer human prayer,
none stops the rain of fire, falling
since the start of our human story.
The lucky ones, unthinking and unkind,
exhausted just to read what some must live,
click other links, turn selfish eyes,
to other stories, other sport. The dead
are dead and cannot speak in court.

Elegies for Alexei Navalny

Last week we invited people to respond poetically to the news of the suspicious death of the Russian dissident politician using the Otwituary form (i.e. <280 characters). Here are the responses we received, with many thanks.

————————————

If you would speakup, know this;
the right word is a wedging of doors,
a filling of lamps, a bending of bars,
a flare shot into the sky, a hand
raised to say no more, a tuning fork
before the choir howls, maybe not
today, or tomorrow, but sometime.

Andy Jackson

————————————–

Show-trialled in the State’s glass box
Navalny’s truth escaped all locks
while the gun-faced thug who put him in it
lies in solitary within it.

W. N. Herbert

—————————————-

You stood hair shorn to humiliate
half hidden by bars defiantly smiling 
setting in minds a different picture 
from that your oppressor would paint
we will trace our own conclusions
history will trace time 
knowing you lit lives beyond tyranny 
and drew hope.

Janet Crawford

————————————–

‘You gave me my shoe-size in earth with bars around it.
Where did it get you? Nowhere.’ Osip and I are laughing
like fools because many people have lips, that shape words.
There is no such thing as silence. Osip screams, as do I.

Jennifer Compton

—————————————

A fresh solidarity
of cut flowers rises
at the Solovetsky Stone

Keren MacPherson

————————————-

Peace Sonnet Chain #1 : Jacqueline Saphra

And talking of love, guess what I don’t love:
flags: those crashed allies of destruction,
your darlings wielded like Kalashnikovs,
their colours raised aloft as nations burn,
burst their seams and unstitch their souls.
So many words for blood, for blame, for loss,
for bombs and borderlines, the stranglehold
of rage could take us all – the human curse –
but why not talk of love? Where shall I start?
I love an open hand: poets at their pens;
big men embracing; breaking bread; the art
of building bridges. Friend (may I call you friend?)
I could love even you, and all the breathing trees,
a quiet sky with nothing falling but the leaves.

Introducing the Peace Sonnet Chain

In 2023 we ran a sequence of sonnets entitled Strike Sonnet Chain in support of those involved in the widespread industrial disputes of that year (which are, of course, largely unresolved). The sequence was ably co-ordinated and edited by poet Jake Polley on behalf of New Boots and Pantisocracies. The resulting chain is now available to buy as a pamphlet from Whaleback City Press, with profits going to support the University and College Union strike fund.

2023 saw the continuation of the war in Ukraine and the horrific escalation of Arab-Israeli conflict in Palestine. Added to that we are witnessing air strikes on Yemen, civil war in Sudan, ongoing civil wars in Myanmar and insurgencies in North Africa, sabre-rattling in the Kremlin and threats to peace from the mouth of Presidential candidates in the USA – it isn’t a pretty picture. In response, we unveil a new sequence of sonnets on the theme of Peace, co-ordinated by poet Jacqueline Saphra. We will publish a new poem every fortnight culminating in a sequence of fourteen, with the final line of each sonnet forming the start of the next sonnet in the chain. These will be gathered into a second pamphlet, to be published later in 2024. We hope you enjoy the sequence as it unfolds.

DePfeffelschrift Illustrated NUMBER FIVE : Jane Burn

Malfeasance Page Two

DePfeffelschrift Illustrated NUMBER FOUR : Jane Burn

Malfeasance Page One