Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets
Human beings suffer.
They torture one another.
They get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
Can fully right a wrong
Inflicted and endured.
The innocents in gaols
Beat on their bars together.
A hunger-striker's father
Stands in the graveyard dumb.
The police widow in veils
Faints at the funeral home.
History says, don't hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.
So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that further shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracle
And cures and healing wells.
Call miracle self-healing:
The utter, self-revealing
Double-take of feeling.
If there's fire on the mountain
Or lightning and storm
And a god speaks from the sky
That means someone is hearing
The outcry and the birth-cry
Of new life at its term.
From Seamus Heaney's The Cure at Troy
That's a beautiful poem George, and so appropriate. Thank you for posting it.
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Glad you liked this piece, Dritanje. It helped to alleviate some of the despair I've been feeling recently about the unspeakable violence throughout the world. The idea that hope and history may rhyme someday is quite beautiful to contemplate.
DeleteSuch an appropriate poem, George. After the massacres, that outpouring of brotherly and sister love, that commitment to freedom and free speech, as people stood up to be counted — in solidarity and with idealism. Not demonstrations against this or that, not angry and violent, not political. We have to believe in a sea-change, in a future rhyme for hope and history, while at the same time righting social injustices and ridding ourselves of all ethnic and religious prejudices. A tall order looking at the state of the world at the moment, but we have to believe.
ReplyDeleteWell said, Robert. Seeing people of good will gather by the millions in various places throughout Europe, but especially in Paris, lifted my spirits immensely. One of the great photos of the Paris gathering was the march with Hollande, Sarkozy, Merkel, Netanyahu, and Mahmoud Abbas locked in arms on the front line. Indeed, one has to hope for that tidal wave of justice that will rise up one day and cause hope and history to rhyme.
DeleteSeamus Heaney says it all, doesn't he George. Like you I was much uplifted by that front row of marchers through the streets of Paris.
ReplyDeleteYes, Pat, I think Heaney is telling us what we all know at a visceral level, specifically, that cynicism and despair lead nowhere. With all of our disappointments, hope remains critical to positive change. As one who grew up in Mississippi and lived to see an African American elected President in two consecutive elections, I know that, in time, the greatest of obstacles can be overcome.
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