Brigid is pleased. She can't wait until her feast day to have the whole poem shared..so I'll do that right now.
What poem will I find for February 2nd?
Doubletake
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 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.
Seamus Heaney,That means someone is hearing
the outcry and the birth-cry
of new life at its term.
7 comments:
Damn. I love that poem
And not just any Irish poet! Love Seamus.
So glad you're blogging again. January 20th felt like new year's day to me.
I loved what Ken Burns said about the two qualities of hope and virtue - that hope was the word used in the campaign, a rather passive word, but virtue is insistent, a call to action, now!
Oh yeah!
Will spread the word about poetry on Feb. 2. Onwards & upwards.
Wow! I had not seen or heard the poem before. Wow!
I didn't now that the Vice-Prez had quoted poetry in public. Wow again!
What other wonders await us in this dawning new age?
Thank you. I must have missed that part while our internet connection jammed up.
"So hope for a great sea-change
on the far side of revenge."
Wow, I do. It seems exactly the one thing one can hope for now.
I have never before felt so proud to be American and so ashamed to be Israeli.
I was thinking of Imbolc yesterday and today. I can't wait for it and yet I must. Brigid remains a motivating force in my life, and the annual celebration of poetic vision really lifts my spirits just prior to the springtime kicking off!
Thanks for that I will use it with my students.
This was beautiful. Thank you!!
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