Poets against the arms trade

The following poem was read by Mr. Henry Beissel in Iran in 1986, responding to statements by a Kuwaiti princess that this was no time for poetry, but a time to mobilize the military. Mr. Beissel read the poem again in June 2010 at the Ottawa arms trade (un)fair, one of the largest weapons bazaars in the world, supplying over 80 countries with weapons of death and destruction, surveillance, simulation (and some search and rescue!) Manifesto in Times of War Tell the enemy this: that missiles can no more blow up the human spirit than tanks can crush an idea. Guns are the weapons of the impotent, and I wouldn't trade one line of true poetry for a thousand of them. The blood flowers in a poem while bombs can only spill it. Shrapnel can shatter glass and shred the flesh but it cannot silence the song in a people's heart. Tell the enemy this: that our missiles fly on imagination's wings they're poems aimed to explode in the heart with all the violence of love and compassion. It may flatter princes to think the sword mightier than the pen, but we have the last word. The true poet pioneers paths of freedom and places on the future's mouth a brotherhood kiss with the rage of a rainstorm that makes the desert bloom. Tell the enemy this: that every man, woman and child wears a helmet poets hammer from a metal harder than any steel the metal of their faith in creation. You can tear a person limb from limb but you cannot sever a song from the listening heart, and when your missiles long rust in scrapyards today's tears will have watered the desert to make yesterday's laughter blossom into tomorrow's love. Tell the enemy this: Yes, we're still writing poems, and if your grenades blow off our hands, we'll sing them into the future. © Henry Beissel, 1986,2010