In response.
This is the last stanza of a long poem
about the beginnings of Western civilization
having been founded in war.
"I praise the gesture of a generous hand that
smooths unequal wrongs into an equal peace, that
would turn the cost of a military aileron
into ivy and guitar strings and terraces of rice.
I praise the kiss, the bowing, the word,
that mark an instant of human time defined by loving.
I celebrate your reluctance to think of harm.
Praise the thought, the reasoning, the prayer, too,
and the tragic play that portrays the destroyer
and does not destroy."