Each year, I spend time on poetry with the students. Two years ago, a student asked if I wrote poetry in junior high school and I was able to say, “Yes!”. He asked me to share with them. I found them in a small lock box I keep at home and shared several with the class.
I mentioned in Culture of Peace Sam Intrator. He suggested teachers expose adolescent students complex, existential questions of life as they move through those formative years. I wrote my poems in about 1969. It was a time when identity was increasingly rooted in the global nature of the world, not just immediate community and family. War, even in Canada, entered our homes via television. I found voice in poetry and expressed an abhorrence to institutional and government approved murder. What set me apart from my peers, was I took no sides. Each was equally wrong in my mind. Mr. McKenzie, an innovative English teacher, encouraged that in us-find our voices.
I shared the following poem with my students. I concede it is not exactly the original, as it was pretty angry. I hope the original message is still there. Students asked for more poems and I complied. These past few months I rediscovered my poet’s voice. It is a gentler voice, I hope.
Win or Lose: What Difference Does it Make?
One game
If it is one
No fun to lose
No great thing to win.
War!
Hollow
Men, women, children gone
In no time
Woe! The vanquished losers;
No winner
Each, vanquished in every sense.
Divided
In ruins
Rebuilding
On countless graves
Rudderless.
Without pride
Beggaring citizens
Values of others
Resenting conquerors
What does war bring?
No jobs
No hospitals
No schools
No homes, but the streets
Destruction everywhere.
What does war bring?
Death of innocence
Loss even in victory
Comrades fallen
But see an enemy vanquished.
Killing
Proving nothing
What fools
Going on forever
Will we learn?
We must
I pray
For human survival.
Take care and have a great 20th of July, 2012.
ivonprefontaine
Teacher as Transformer 