I came across this amazingly beautiful poem yesterday... had to share.

[rosesaylavee]

Maya Angelou's 'A Brave and Startling Truth'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KVytZdM-Pg&feature=share

We, this people, on a small and lonely planet
Traveling through casual space
Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns
To a destination where all signs tell us
It is possible and imperative that we learn
A brave and startling truth

And when we come to it
To the day of peacemaking
When we release our fingers
From fists of hostility
And allow the pure air to cool our palms

When we come to it
When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate
And faces sooted with scorn are scrubbed clean
When battlefields and coliseum
No longer rake our unique and particular sons and daughters
Up with the bruised and bloody grass
To lie in identical plots in foreign soil

When the rapacious storming of the churches
The screaming racket in the temples have ceased
When the pennants are waving gaily
When the banners of the world tremble
Stoutly in the good, clean breeze

...More text at: http://www.inspirationpeak.com/poetry/bravetruth.html

(This poem was written and delivered in honor of the 50th anniversary of the United Nations.)

[Kind of Blue]

1. Ah, Maya. She never fails to deliver.

I've never read this one. Thanks for both links, Rosesaylavee :hug:

[Flying Dream Blues]

2. Amazing and inspiring.

Thanks for posting this. How can we not know the truth in her words? The sadness comes from knowing that almost all of our suffering is by our own hands.
Hope and love.
Peace to all.

[japple]

3. Beautiful, beautiful. Thanks for sharing it Rosa.

n/t

[I Have A Dream]

4. Oh, how wonderfully beautiful!

May her vision come true. May we each do our small part to make it so -- single act by single act. As single drops fill the ocean, so may it be with each of our positive decisions to make peace and love our way of operating in the world.

Thank you for posting this lovely piece, rosie!

[Mnemosyne]

5. Simply beautiful, rosesaylavee. Thank you. Next four stanzas:

When we come to it
When we let the rifles fall from our shoulders
And children dress their dolls in flags of truce
When land mines of death have been removed
And the aged can walk into evenings of peace
When religious ritual is not perfumed
By the incense of burning flesh
And childhood dreams are not kicked awake
By nightmares of abuse

When we come to it
Then we will confess that not the Pyramids
With their stones set in mysterious perfection
Nor the Gardens of Babylon
Hanging as eternal beauty
In our collective memory
Not the Grand Canyon
Kindled into delicious color
By Western sunsets

Nor the Danube, flowing its blue soul into Europe
Not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji
Stretching to the Rising Sun
Neither Father Amazon nor Mother Mississippi who, without favor,
Nurture all creatures in the depths and on the shores
These are not the only wonders of the world

When we come to it
We, this people, on this minuscule and kithless globe
Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade and the dagger
Yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace
We, this people on this mote of matter
In whose mouths abide cankerous words
Which challenge our very existence
Yet out of those same mouths
Come songs of such exquisite sweetness
That the heart falters in its labor
And the body is quieted into awe