Sally Murphy is hosting today’s Poetry Friday round-up.
It’s becoming harder and harder to pick up a newspaper or listen to the news. NPR was my go to radio station in the car, but not any more. And I can’t remember the last time I watched a news program on TV. World news, national news, even state and local news seems to have become relentlessly awful, at times even catastrophic. I came across this poem in an anthology I had bought at the Strand back when I could walk to it on my lunch hour. I think it’s one I need to read often in the coming weeks and months…or however long it takes for the people who run this world (and seem bent upon destroying it) to come to their senses.
Thanks, Robert Frost by David Ray
Do you have hope for the future?
someone asked Robert Frost, toward the end.
Yes, and even for the past, he replied,
that it will turn out to have been all right
for what it was, something we can accept,
mistakes made by the selves we had to be,
not able to be, perhaps, what we wished,
or what looking back half the time it seems
we could so easily have been, or ought…
The future, yes, and even for the past,
that it will become something we can bear.
And I too, and my children, so I hope,
will recall as not too heavy the tug
of those albatrosses I sadly placed
upon their tender necks. Hope for the past,
yes, old Frost, your words provide that courage,
and it brings strange peace that itself passes
into past, easier to bear because
you said it, rather casually, as snow
went on falling in Vermont years ago.
We do need that courage as Frost passed it on to us. I am never giving up! Hugs to you, Tara, for all of us to keep fighting for what’s right.
LikeLike
Amen and amen. Seriously. What you said and then what David Ray said. I’m with ya.
LikeLike
Gentle and big-hearted. Nice pick, Tara.
LikeLike
A perfect poem for less than perfect times. I especially heard the line: “mistakes made by the selves we had to be’. Thank you.
LikeLike
This poem is so poignant, Tara. “Mistakes made by the selves we had to be…” is a powerful line. Would that we all could see our recent past through this lens. It seems like the present would be so much easier if we were all a little more forgiving.
LikeLiked by 1 person
This poem speaks to me in the light (or is it dark) of these days. I find it hard to watch or listen to the news, too, but poems can offer hope and courage to keep on.
LikeLike