somesaypip

Life for an Aussie chick in North West Cambodia. Local work in sports, education and development.

Sunday, March 21, 2010

The Cure at Troy

I've seen a couple of different versions for this poem by Seamus Heaney. No matter, my favourite part is in every one of them. I love the optimism expressed in the second stanza. Very quotable/ preach-able.

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.

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 farther shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles and healing wells.

Call 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.


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