{"sf1_id":1757684,"sf2_id":"dePYNkma","title":"Blank Verse Essay On the Treachery of Hope","author":"Rob MacWolf","words":671,"posted_at":"2021-08-29T07:54:00.000Z","tags":["Iambic pentameter","LGBTQ","Poetry","blank verse"],"url":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1757684-blank-verse-essay-on-the-treachery-of-hope","original_url":"https://sofurry.com/s/dePYNkma","image_url":"https://cdn.sofurryfiles.com/submissions/thumbnails/d8/c7/d8c7ce52-f25d-416e-b142-caece29ddad4","description":"#44 of poetry\n\nI do not say, do not Hope, for hope is a needful thing. I say, do not believe that you need to hope at all costs, that you must remain in a place where there is no hope in order to hope there nonetheless.\nFor they who hope instead of living will lose both their life and their hope. But they who choose life instead of hope may live to hope another day.\nAnd I will derive joy, in the meantime, from things other than hope. Such as the fact that I got to use \"Homoousion\" and \"Anthropocene\" in the same poem!","content":"You must learn how to live and not to hope\n\nFor hope will be a luxury ere long.\n\nFor hope can be both manacle and chain.\n\nFor hope can keep you too spellbound to run\n\nUntil the waters rise too high, and boil.\n\nYou would not be the first. In ages past\n\n'What princes do' was homoousion\n\nWith earthquakes, famines, floods, and funnel clouds:\n\nUnstoppable and unaccountable.\n\nWhy should you think yourselves exceptioned out\n\nFrom this, save for the easy lies of hope?\n\nThat keep you in your place, to take the blame\n\nFor those you did not speak\u0026nbsp;for, and who shall\n\nNot ever speak for you. Soon all the wheels\n\nOf false republic fall, they always do,\n\nAnd prove themselves unfixed from any thing,\n\nTurning and turning in the widening gyre,\n\nCosmetic, and entirely functionless.\n\nNow hope says \"Lift them into place again,\"\n\nAre you a fool enough to heed its voice?\n\n  \n\nWe've had the long semester's first exam.\n\nCoronavirus was the first real test\n\nOf governments, of principalities,\n\nOn whether in a climate crisis they\n\nCan see priorities. Can place the lives\n\nOf living people over lifeless gold\n\nWhich will be worthless should the people die.\n\nI do not know of one that did not fail\n\nAt this, the first, the easiest of the tests.\n\nThere's going to be more. They will be worse.\n\nThere will be wildfires on suburban lawns.\n\nThere will be floods befouling\u0026nbsp;farm\u0026nbsp;and fen.\n\nThere will be hurricanes upon our heads.\n\nI say 'there will be.' There already are.\n\nVanilla, Chocolate, and Coffee all\n\nWill likely be extinct within your life,\n\nAnd that will seem a mere frivolity.\n\n  \n\nThe irony of ironies is that\n\nThe moment that proud humankind ascends--\n\nIn power, in wisdom, elements to grasp,\n\nTo harness to an age anthropocene--\n\nWhatever humans hold the harness lose\n\nAll trace of their humanity. We lift\n\nA man into the seat where he controls\n\nThe earthquakes, famines, floods, and funnel clouds,\n\nBut those become not one whit more controlled.\n\nRather the man controlling them becomes\n\nAs uncontrolled, as unaccountable\n\nAs earthquake, famine, flood, and funnel cloud,\n\nAs Old Thin God-Kings on their ziggurats.\n\n  \n\nSo you must learn to live and not to hope.\n\nFor you will not have hope, and yet somehow\n\nMust live. I bid you look you unto us.\n\nWe've lived the lesson all the world now needs.\n\nWe know well how to live, and not to hope.\n\nI do not say that none of us have hope.\n\nI do not say that all of us despair.\n\nHope is not Joy. Hope is not love. Hope is\n\nNot fun, frivolity, ferocity,\n\nNor life, nor lust, nor laughter. All of these\n\nWe have instead of hope. I can but speak\n\nFor me, but I remember well the night\n\nWhen truth of what I was wore no more mask,\n\nWhen faith became a succubus above\n\nMy sleep paralysis, and sealed my lips,\n\nTo drain my lungs, to drink away my hope.\n\nThree times I tried in vain to draw it back.\n\nI heard it laugh \"Too late,\" and then depart.\n\nAnd I would wager many, if not all,\n\nOf these my people of the conquering cold,\n\nThe sunset, and the many-colored flame,\n\nCould tell a tale to harmonize with this.\n\nWe learned the lesson young. What kind of hope\n\nWas ever there, for people such as us?\n\nAnd yet, Behold: We did not waste away.\n\nWe did not die without it, and we will\n\nAnother sunrise see without it, too.\n\nIf you would live--and we would have you live--\n\nThen this, my friend, is what you have to do.\n\n  \n\nAnd aye, it may be on the other side\n\nWhen you have ceased to look for it, you will\n\nFind hope again. Abandoned on the road.\n\nWhere many of my tribe of conquering cold,\n\nOf sunset, and of many colored flame\n\nHave found it, when they looked for it no more.\n\nAnd then may you, with sober eyes and clear,\n\nDecide if it's worth picking up again.\n\n  \n  \n\n","series":{"name":"poetry","previous":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1746779-saturday-dedicated-to-the-god-of-cycles-of-violence-and-revenge-who-devours-his-children-but-also-of-harvest-and-the-lost-golden-age.json","next":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1766517-rust-river-valley-rail-crossing-three-pop-527.json"}}