The Feast of Christ, 1945

The war has gone to sleep and peace has awakened,
and the doves coo to one another on the boughs;
the wolf now eats grass in renunciation,
and the lamb and the lion have become brothers;
hatred is effaced and hypocrisy has vanished,
and after them the rule of judgment stands upright.
So claim those who won the war—
but their claim is mere illusion.
The law of the universe decrees for creation
that strife and contention shall endure:
every claim from the strong is lawful,
every complaint from the weak forbidden;
the rights of the poor go to waste,
while the rights of the rich suffer no wrong;
and equality and brotherhood are empty talk,
beside whose falseness dreams fall short.
The turmoil now stirring in Greece
will be followed by revolt and collision.
What sin has Iran committed, that they
bereaved her, so that her eye cannot sleep?
And the Straits are a cause of discord
that the days have not succeeded in resolving;
and Palestine—they have Judaized her by usurpation,
and many a usurpation beside which death itself is light.
No wonder, then, if war should blaze up again one day—
the friction of powers is followed by conflagration.

O you who hold the reins of authority, gently!
What the peoples have endured is enough.
Desist from the ambitions of conquest,
that souls and minds may be at ease;
offer affection pure and unalloyed,
with no suspicion to guard against and no deceit;
grant right in full to those to whom it belongs,
with nothing sunk in obscurity and nothing vague;
and make of your weapons implements
for the reaper and the vinedresser to own.
Then, and only then, may we rightly sing:
the war is decided, and peace is settled.