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.
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.
Just the words I needed to hear today: )
Lisa, I’m so glad you liked the poem—I think it speaks perfectly to our time.