The Sacred Word Poem by Tony Adah

Letter by letter
Word by word
Verse by verse
I will chant the sacred word
To the troubled world
Not from any book
But from my own enduring faith.

This word, O elusive word
We hear it,
We imagine it
It perches on the boughs
Of the world and awhile it flies away
Peacefully, it decides
To stay permanently only
On the pages dictionaries
Nearby, it is here
And so unreachable.

It seldom comes
Often its place chaos usurps
We need peace
A breath of fresh air
Not plumes of black smoke
Smothering the sky
We need peace
Not bombs and shrapnel
Flying in the sky like kites.

We need this word
Sacrosanct, always desecrated
The word that in silence speaks
Of calm, denounces hate and war
The word that drops
Globs of neighbourliness
In the cities and frontiers
Of the world torn apart.