October 15: Room for Hope, Maxine Kumin, "Women and Horses"

There's always room for hope.  I have to remind myself of that fact from time to time.  If hope didn't exist, I doubt the human race would still exist.  Think about all the terrible things that have happened over the centuries.  The Black Plague.  Two World Wars.  The Holocaust.  Earthquakes.  Famines.  Tsunamis.  If hope wasn't around to come in and sweep away the despair, we would all be living on the brink of extinction, waiting for the next catastrophe to come along.

Yet, most people don't do that.  We choose, instead, to believe in goodness and love.  I choose that, anyway.  Yes, I get bogged down sometimes.  I let that darkness overtake me for a little while.  But, eventually, I turn toward the light.  That's what I'm trying to do tonight.  I've been bogged down, and I need to find my way back to hope.

That's what Maxine Kumin's poem is about tonight:  turning away from the dark past, embracing all things young, beautiful, and alive.

That's what Saint Marty needs tonight.  A little dose of beauty.

Women and Horses

by:  Maxine Kumin

After Auschwitz, to write a poem is barbaric.
                                                                 —Theodor Adorno

After Auschwitz: after ten of my father's kin--
the ones who stayed--starved, then were gassed in the camps.
After Vietnam, after Korea, Kuwait, Somalia, Haiti, Afghanistan.
After the Towers. This late in the life of our haplessly orbiting world
let us celebrate whatever scraps the muse, that naked child,
can pluck from the still smoldering dumps.

If there's a lyre around, strike it! A body, stand back, give it air!
Let us have sparrows laying their eggs in bluebird boxes.
Let us have bluebirds insouciantly nesting elsewhere.
Lend us navel-bared teens, eyebrow- and nose-ringed prodigies
crumbling breakfast bagels over dog-eared and jelly-smeared texts.
Allow the able-bodied among us to have steamy sex.

Let there be fat old ladies in flowery tent dresses at bridge tables.
Howling babies in dirty diapers and babies serenely at rest.
War and detente will go on, detente and renewed tearings asunder,
we can never break free from the dark and degrading past.
Let us see life again, nevertheless, in the words of Isaac Babel
as a meadow over which women and horses wander.

Maxine and a horse