Doubletake

Human beings suffer, they torture one another, they get hurt and get hard. No poem or play or song can fully right a wrong inflicted and endured.


The innocent in gaols beat on their bars together. A hunger-striker's father stands in the graveyard dumb. The police widow in veils faints at the funeral home


History says, Don't hope on this side of the grave. But then, once in a lifetime the longed for tidal wave of justice can rise up, and hope and history rhyme.


So hope for a great sea-change on the far side of revenge. Believe that a further shore is reachable from here. Believe in miracles and cures and healing wells.


Call the miracle self-healing: The utter self-revealing double-take of feeling. If there's fire on the mountain or lightning and storm and a god speaks from the sky,


That means someone is hearing the outcry and the birth-cry of new life at its term.

Seamus Heaney