HOPE Never easy in his mind, that man still keeps hoping. It's true: the great keep wealth and power to themselves, liars prosper because we love to hear a lie, each of us who fears another is feared by someone else, and we're all absolutely right to fear: none is trustworthy. "So what is there to hope for?" That's not the point. Justice, kindness, and peace of mind are meant for the realm of imagination, not for here. There, all sleep is pure and beautiful, the days are harmonious and even-paced. We would not fit in. The animals of that place would attack us as strangers who do not know how to treat them. We are of this place, that always breeds some "next" from its "before". A tree whose roots fail and branches fall is drilled with holes, some featheration gets busy there, coos its tune from the opening, eggs are begun. When one shade is struck down, the sunlight falling on the earth draws up another out of the seedlings. It's not so much that in this place everything exists in time, it's that time is in us, all of us, trees and rocks and airs included. That man never easy in his mind doesn't really hope for help coming from the hills or plains, seas or mountains--what he calls "hope" is time moving through him and leaving a trace he can feel and must embody in an image of what has not yet come.
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