Ballads of Peace in War

A Jesuit priest's meditation on the First World War, these ballads carry the strange hope of peace lodged inside the machinery of destruction. Michael Earls, who spent decades teaching and administering at Jesuit institutions, writes with the calm authority of a man who has looked closely at mortality and found something beyond it. The verses move through trenches and trenches of memory, rendering the absurdity and sanctity of young men sent to die for causes that would not survive them. There is no jingoism here, no celebration of glory only grief that such beauty must be made from boys. The title holds its paradox quietly: peace does not come after the war but alongside it, in the moments between shells when soldiers remember what they are fighting to preserve. This is poetry written by someone who understood that faith does not easy the horror but endures within it.