Poem In Your Post Blog Hop: "Hope"

Hope

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 or endured.

The innocent 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 a further shore
is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
and cures and healing wells.

Call the 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.

- Seamus Heaney from The Cure at Troy

And here's another reason to love book blogging: everybody in your day to day life can get into the act too!  This one's courtesy of my mom, who's been following my Greek trend and offered it up from one of her favorite sources: "Inward/Outward" daily emails. 

And, of course, Seamus Heaney rocks.  If you haven't read his Beowulf translation or any of his multitudinous poems, perhaps you should! 

Share us a poem that landed on your doorstep or in your inbox today, or simply post whatever poem feels perfect right now...


MFB,
L