At The Shrine Of Peace Poem by Sarah Mkhonza

Now we worship and beg
At the shrine if peace.
Prayers of babies born,
Breathing war and spitting
shrepnell. Pellets decorate
walls and pavements, where once
they played. Peace like a spirit
gone. They walk in foreign lands
wailing. Women soldiers driving out war,
guns in hand.

If it arrives our hands should be open,
like a stranger, this long awaited love,
shall find us ready for we have cried
enough. To dust the grit out of eyes red
with crying. The thought of peace brings
hope. Why wait at the place where we can,
and not go an knell at the shrine of peace.

This shrine ever waits for us to believe,
be converts to this real faith that is here,
as we march on our knees knowing that we can,
bring an end to this tumult of pushing and
towing, which forces people out of one place,
to lay them dead on another.

As we kneel at the shrine of peace,
our hands are together and saying,
the guns have not been held by these,
and should never be. For to put a gun
in one's hand is to bring about war,
to this shrine of peace, at which we
all kneel, for one day we will be no more