The Launching of Poems

I read of German and Chilean poets
dropping their poems from
helicopters to cities below–
bombs of peace
(not the kind that wear
“peace” as false attire
while killing children
and tearing lives asunder).
The poets’ words fluttered down,
harmless,
gentle as snowflakes
on the first of December,
or migrating geese floating southward
till spring.
Would that all bombs were poems,
all missiles were paintings filled with light,
all grenades exploded only into symphonies,
or that leaders would
be still more often
and sit in repose beneath oak trees
reading the works
of Solomon,
Shakespeare,
and Rossetti,
listening to Beethoven
and the voices of doves.

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