Hope

 

Hope, I have always had hope

Blurred too much now to feel or drive

Over the empty scope of my perception

Does this mean that hope has vanished

Or is kept hidden by the war that rages

In my life, what I admit, little there is of it.

 

Hope is just a concept I always remind myself and

The fears of all days are just a dream

Of all kinds, not simple, I must fight and go on

As I do every moment, do what I can crippled and blind

My hopes have been crushed, but I stumble and strive

To free myself from this evil in ways

 

That must succeed, even if every evil that could be known

Or unknown is yet to come. I will have no mercy now

And do what precisely is the light, sparing none blessing

Or destruction. I hope against the battles glare that I

Have reached and touched the final hope of peace

In this cursed and half glimmering trail of tears

 

That’s led me to such certainty and sooths

My uncertainties, its fate, not anyone’s fears but

Nightmare come out underneath the sun and is

Your own hopes now both the sweet and the undone

Unknown are the ways of what yet is yet to come

The dark has nurtured seed before, of hope when hope is done.

 

Saul Scudder 2002