The poems and essays explore the creativity of mercy in the face of the unbearable and irreversible.

They do not suggest passivity. Far from it! They support you standing with strength, honor, and powerful inner resources despite the broken world around and inside of us.

Reconciliation poetry offers a specific type of expression. 

War poetry asks us to consider the impact of war and the need for a cease-fire. Love poetry is about the joys and pains of intimate connection. These are important topics!

Reconciliation poetry is poetry about interruptions of cycles of violence. If these cycles are not interrupted they last generations (that is we condition our children to not question “this is just how it is”). Cycles of violence often make the original victim a perpetrator of violence. Reconciliation poetry is about decisions we make when we realize we have a choice in restoring a broken connection.

Reconciliation poetry realizes that wounds do not heal with peace treaties (though that is an important start). Reconciliation is also not about self-destructive giving to abusive people. We are called to be good stewards with the lives we are lent. It’s all right, and sometimes wise, to not reconcile and to support one insisting on respect. Sometimes that insistence leads to respect and the conditions for reconciliation, sometimes it only preserves one’s peace. 

Instead, reconciliation poetry says, “Yes, things are bad. The world is not as it ought to be. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Things can be different. We can flourish again.”

And no, it’s often not popular to think this way. But one must be able to envision a world where people can get along. That doesn’t mean the parties will get there. It does make the odds of a better future higher than 0 percent, which is where one is of there is no imagination for what is possible.

Here is an example:

Sophocles, 496-405 BCE trans. Seamus Heaney, excerpt from THE CURE AT TROY

Human beings suffer,
they torture one another,
they get hurt and get hard.

History says, Don’t hope
on this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
the longed for tidal wave
of justice can rise up,
and hope and history rhyme.

So hope for a great sea-change
on the far side of revenge.
Believe that a further shore
is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
and cures and healing wells.