ACCOUNT OF MY DAYS
Sequence: 8
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.