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Peace poem included in Lewiston garden

Submitted

Thu, Jun 23rd 2016 05:00 pm

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

 

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