from The Cure at Troy
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
~