TOMORROW, Or Maybe The Day After

These days, I find myself slipping now and again nearer the swirling eddies of depression, occasionally wetting a toe or two; and I thought, "I must not be the only one."

So I grabbed one of my anthologies - along with my English degree, I amassed quite an impressive collection of anthologies - and in the index, looked under "hope." Nothing. If it were there it would have been between "homo" and "horse," but it was not.

The volume was my NORTON ANTHOLOGY OF CONTEMPORARY POETRY, and apparently hope is not a contemporary theme. A bit of browsing left me feeling lower than I started. Serious stuff here.

Look what I found. I had to go all the way back to Victorian Poetry. I guess they had more to look forward to. Think?

Song of Hope

- Thomas Hardy

O sweet To-morrow! -
After to-day
There will away
This sense of sorrow.
Then let us borrow
Hope, for a gleaming
Soon will be streaming,
Dimmed by no gray -
No gray!

While the winds wing us
Sighs from The Gone,
Nearer to dawn
Minute-beats bring us;
When there will sing us
Larks of a glory
Waiting our story
Further anon -
Anon!

Doff the black token,
Don the red shoon,
Right and retune
Viol-strings broken;
Null the words spoken
In speeches of rueing,
The night cloud is hueing,
To-morrow shines soon -
Shines soon!

SONG OF HOPE
- Daisy Yamora, Nicaragua
(trans. James Black, Bernardo
Garcia-Pandavenes, & Cliff Ross)

One day the fields will be forever green
and the earth will be black, sweet and moist.
Our children will grow tall on her
and the children of our children.

And they will be as free as the trees
and the birds of the wilderness.

Each morning they will wake in the joy of having life
and will know that the earth was reconqured for them.
One day . . .

Today we plough the parched fields
but each furrow is soaked with blood.


Aint' I A Woman! A Book of Woman's poetry
From Around the World, Edited by Illona Linthwaite