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!

"A JOURNEY OF A THOUSAND MILES ... "

I have several anthologies of poetry written by women. They span centuries and cultures and geography. I love to listen to the differing voices and gaze inward at the myriad pictures they paint.

I am especially drawn to these books when I hear phrases like, "Women are ..." , "Women like .. " or "All women ...". You can fill in those blanks with any number of inanities, that seek to reduce half the world's population into tiny little boxes. In these books, however, no two voices are the same. Each is whole and unto itself, as are we all. (In the interest of full disclosure, I myself, am a woman.)



I decided to embark on a bit of a world tour, on the distaff side that is. So, for a while I will be posting poems from women all over the world.




The anthology I am using is Aint' I A Woman! A Book of Woman's poetry From Around the World, Edited by Illona Linthwaite.



My first offering is from Mahsati, twelfth century, Iran. It was translated from Farsi by Deirdre Lashgari.


QUATRAINS

Better to live as a rogue and a bum,
a lover all treat as a joke,
to hang out with a crowd of comfortable drunks,
than crouch in a hypocrite's cloak.

Unless you can dance through a common bar,
with a vagabond's step, you're not going to make it.
This is the road of the restless who gamble
their lives; risk yours, or your not going to make it.