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July 2010, Featured Articles, Poetry

Hope Springs in a Time of Hunger and Uprootedness

By Ciarán Madden   Sat, Mar 06, 2010

Hope Springs in a Time of Hunger and Uprootedness

 

 

 

 

 

 


 It's past 2am
 Again
 And heaven shines
 Its bright white light
 Again
 Into the darkened corners of my mind
 In intervals


 Like a great warm sentry
 Doing his rounds
 He laughs at me kindly
 When he sees me
 And pokes me in the ribs
 While telling me 'everything's just fine
 Don't worry'


 Like the stretching of the evenings
 The hour jumped forward
 Or the puff of a cloud
 Over the blue green valley
 Oh how lucky we feel
 Him and I
 And all whose hearts are open
 To breathe this air


 And watch these tides
 To have been born here
 To have been alive
 And how lucky we'll be
 To die here
 In the soft warm soil
 Of our mothers


 With our only fear
 'Does it all just end here
 Like this
 In the cool and dark
 Of nothingness
 No hell?'


 Yes, the heaven I see
 And feel
 Has no need to make ill
 Or judgement
 And though it loves
 It is no father
 Or mother
 It is no brother or sister
 Or cousin or friend


 But is both and all and everything
 It is the bringer of sex and seed
 The breaker of smiles and waves
 It is the lifter of spirits
 Beaten down
 The falling of water
 And whisper of leaves
 It is the song of the blackbird
 On the branch


 It is the sun
 The moon
 The rain and stars
 It is a mountain
 And a cold lake


 It is a hungry fox
 A rabbit and a squirrel
 It is a heron waiting on the river bank
 A seagull screeching, swooping down,
 It is the river itself
 And the sea
 It is a shrew
 And makes of itself a burrow
 And a hill


 It is all stone
 All cats
 And every mule
 It is the panting of a dog
 And a city


 It is what's lost for words
 When we get too excited
 By love or by the morning
 It's what passes between us
 When we forget ourselves
 And remember such creation


 It is the pump in our hearts
 That fills us forever
 With the colours that we dream
 In their spinning wheel
 Of forward moving venture


 It is a beginning,
 An end,
 A move toward invention
 And,
 When our fears
 Do finally come asunder,
 It's what sets us all free
At the dawning of the summer

By Ciarán Madden

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