Peace Prize Forum 2000: Bearing the Burden of Peace

BEARING THE BURDEN OF PEACE
Bronze sculpture and poetry by mac gimse
February, 2000

Bearing the Burden of Peace
by mac gimse

The delicate transition between conception and birth is the beginning of BEARING THE BURDEN OF PEACE. One side of this bronze sculpture shows a woman holding the heavy burden of her pregnant stomach anticipating child-birth. Mothers feel deep despair when, with or without a choice, they lose a child anywhere from the prenatal state to maturity. Viewed from the other side a young man holds up a child who emerges from the woman's head, her labor complete and her dream fulfilled. Once a child is born, it becomes vulnerable to the outside world, to war, famine, poverty and abuse. Every country in the world faces the need to provide its children with nutrition, stability, and community, which are our continuing burdens of peace.

The bronze BEARING THE BURDEN OF PEACE is meant to be passed hand-to-hand through the audience so that everyone will see the image, feel the forms and experience the weight of passing the PEACE piece.

Bearing the Burden of Peace
Poetry for the Peace Prize Forum, February, 2000
by mac gimse

If peace is a form of ultimate human understanding,
   before I pass into the heart of God's surrounding
      I want to plunge my head into the seas of language
         and drink from every tongue only the words of kindness.
            With the taste of love in my mouth
               I want to whisper silence on wars of shouting
                  at children of abuse, between embittered genders,
                     on races from hatred, within unholy religions,
                        and by angered nations.

If peace is death, as in rest in peace,
   before I lie down underground - to cease,
      I want to swaddle myself in unfamiliar clothing
         and nestle into the smell of fresh-dug earth
            next to the stones and bones of forgotten people.
               Then I want to run my fingers through the silt of their sorrows
                  and quench their mourning thirst for those innocent
                     who were shed on never-again fields for letting blood.

If peace is kindled in progeny,
   before I garland my soul in bouquets of eternity,
      I want to spill my seeds of final begetting
         into the roots of the mercy tree, from which hangs
            the last unChristly corpse of human harm,
               and, for the yet unborn, I want to feel their blood
                  flowing through my flanks
                     that will soak tomorrow,
                        in the deep red, ages past
                           of all our origins.

If peace is tradition-passing,
   before I give up my most prized possessions
      of hair and teeth, flesh and breath,
         before I let go of hoards of family and hugs of friends,
            I want to squeeze my soul through the martyr's throat
               to feel words of compassion spoken by the lips of mercy:
                  If I "love my neighbor as myself,"
                     there can be peace on earth.
                        Then I want to flood the world with the sweet
                           sounds of Bearing the Burden of Peace
                              using YOUR impressions,
                                 not just my own,
                                    of how and why we lived.

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