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The Lewiston International Peace Garden received a new addition this past week: "The Peace Garden," a poem dedicated to the garden and written by local poet Robert M. Giannetti. The poem is printed on an engraved pedestal within the garden, which sits next to the Frontier House on Center Street.
Claudia Marasco, caretaker of the garden, is pictured with Giannetti.
THE PEACE GARDEN
In this garden hope is clear and bright -
springing from earth in stirring breeze,
telling time in fruitful fragrance
under sky afire and in sustaining rain.
Gardens fine
Let mind incline
To greening thought
So long sought
So long sought
In the consuming smoke and din of daily commerce,
the serpent that slithered through Eden lurks,
ready to blight the glory, blast the bloom -
demanding dominion, entrenching waste and doom.
Gardens fine
Let mind incline
To greening thought
So long sought
So long sought
The shining red apple still holds its relentless allure.
Technology vies with nature, a challenge to limits
for good and for ill, the unforeseen forever looming,
Eden's expulsion echoing in the roar of enterprise.
Seeds of amity between industry and nature are yet planted
in peaceful places, gardens such as this, freedom's chords
flowering beyond the groan of war, the shriek of greed,
the spilling and waste of earth's precious store.
Gardens fine
Let mind incline
To greening thought
So long sought
So long sought
On either side of a river, two nations long at peace
seek the solace of the spirit's plenty in sun and in shade,
this garden of friendship an emblem of that quest,
its unfurled colors a floral flag of hope -
a hope whispering in winds across the globe
that the glory of renewal can flow in sun and in rain
to the very ground we stand upon
and flower into a new Eden of the mind.
Gardens fine
Let mind incline
To greening thought
So long sought
So long sought
Where freedom and friendship bloom
Where freedom and friendship bloom
Robert M. Giannetti