A Poem for Our Time

I read “The Cure at Troy” by Seamus Heaney the other day and felt a strong resonance with the times we’re experiencing. All over the world, people are face the uncertainty of the pandemic and the ravages of financial peril. People raise their voices to decry the injustice of racism and call for an end to militarism and war. As many wisdom keepers remind us, a time of crisis holds within it the seeds of change. Let’s put our energy into the great work that we are each called to do.

Pillars at the Acropolis

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 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 miracle self-healing:

The utter, self-revealing

Double-take of feeling.

If there’s a 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.

2 thoughts on “A Poem for Our Time

    • amusingpoet June 9, 2020 / 8:12 PM

      Lisa, I’m so glad you liked the poem—I think it speaks perfectly to our time.

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