During the fall, Uttryck Magazine held a poetry contest with the theme “Nuances of peace”. Having received many good contributions, we found it hard to decide the winner of this edition. Nonetheless we have come to a result, which you can find and read down below. The winning poem will be printed in the next physical issue and read on Radio UF. Also, check out the last poetry contest which was held in the spring of this year.
#3 We were told to want peace – Alex Goede
We were told to want peace, yet when the waves settle, we can’t help but paddle our hands, making small motions increase.
So, I say I want peace, yet when I look at the sunrise and the waves, my hands start to reach,
searching for something to think about, something to make as grand as the sea before me, an ocean vast enough to swallow all the islands I can breach, the ones so solid, they scraped my skin worse than the sea could ever teach.
So, I think of the ocean, the one in my mind. I worry, and I lose sleep, as it swallows the other worries and for a moment, I feel peace.
But if I don’t think of it as the ocean, it is, it will pull me down as it did with the islands, and all that mattered, all to the abyss.
So, now when I think of the ocean, I feel a fleeting peace, as the water presses on my chest, leaving me with no release.
I find myself weary, as the ocean grows more painful than the sharpness of the islands, a pain that cuts deep, slow, and dreary.
With resignation, I let it take me, dragging me further from shore, and into its endless whirlpool, down to the ocean floor.
Until I find myself on solid ground, a place I thought the ocean drowned. Yet it greets me with warm sand, as the sun sinks below the land.
And the only water I see is the one that brought me back to peace.
#2 A Lonely Peace – Alfred Martinsson
The cannons steady thunder
Its march a pitiful tune
Dark days filled with wonder
At memories briskly strewn
When did the lights go out
Over cold and empty streets
At the first sign of doubt
Or at the sting of defeats
The song of the battered
Borne with malice and greed
Tell me it mattered
The dead man’s creed
Yet darkness eludes me
Though it fills me with no glee
For can peace be found
With pains abound
With darkness crowned
A thankless sun
Lonely rays agree
Tomorrow can be won
For light still finds me
#1 I have seen no missile flight – Wilmer Dahlin
I have seen no missile flight
over the wine dark waters of
some continental sea that surpasses
all the lights of stars and comets.
Do you remember? We
watched as they stove off
the charcoal from the firmament
the night sky, broke and mended
and stood above our quarrels
then ended.
And as those splendid worlds expired
from us there were no words,
but inside ourselves:
we called this peace.
Now we call it memory;
and where are we now?
You: unknown, me: alone,
sitting in the empty quiet,
for there is indeed quiet.
No words are uttered here,
for once.
But this is not peace you cannot call this peace.
It is the sharpening of knives and
the cruelest evening,
the intermission before
the ignition. The thought that
what I feared would come to pass is now
knocking on the front door. No,
do not call this peace.
For soon the missiles are flying.
Call this silence.
