Stephen Gill’s POEM THE FLAME GIVES ALL THE REASONS FOR PEACE

Helen Bar-Lev, Israel

Stephen Gill’s world is one of exquisite sensitivity. His compassion encompasses all humankind and probably the animal world as well. THE FLAME is a poem of yearning for Peace. It gives us chilling, depressing descriptions of the aftermath of terrorist attacks, particularly vicious over the past fifteen years. We cannot even be certain of which attack he is speaking; we are reasonably sure it is the twin towers in New York City, but perhaps it is the Oklahoma City bombing, or the Nairobi/Dar-Es Salaam terrorist attacks on the American Embassies there in 1998, perhaps the Buenos Aires bombing on the Jewish Community Centre in 1994. Most certainly Stephen is remembering the terrorism in his native India, and I, an Israeli, see in my mind the skeletons of buses, of restaurants, of marketplaces, of hotels, the body parts he tells of, the horror… In places his poem is reminiscent of King David’s “Song of Songs”; it is a love poem to Peace. “Life disintegrates/ where the rays of flame/ do not reach”, he says. And to terrorists: “This is the palace of peace/do not come near”, as peace says to him, “Open your heart/I live in your veins”.

And he to peace: “Here I shall devise a basilica for you/where daffodils shall never die”. After an attack, “I do not hear any dove/or nightingale/the leafless trees/tear me apart”. “For days/sparrows, roses and dawns/forgot their songs…”

THE FLAME is a poem of tenderness, incomprehension, longing, anger, hope, sadness. It is a poem which gives all the reasons for Peace, and also the reasons we do not have it. Were there more Stephen Gills in this world.

Helen Bar-Lev,

Editor-in-Chief,

Voices Israel Anthology. Israel