Reflections on a lost election

This good morning in late July

raining hard

and the moving hills

treading gently on my heart,

reflecting on a lost election,

brings to mind the other victories

too shy to enter the warmth of our world:

waiting to be born,

still-born now, sometimes aborted,

always malnourished,

always, always poor.

I think of how the earth yawned

as we passed by cursing bitterly

the rain, the puddles, the mud.

But last night I stopped

and let the earth turn

in its immemorial rotation

for we have had to measure victory

not by how far we have come

but the reluctant tears that swell in vacant eyes,

the amount of ground retain,

the few square inches for laughter

the few cubic inches in our hearts

for love.

Hantane

July 1992

[from the collection 'Epistles: 1984-1996]

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