The longed for tidal wave of justice (Seamus Heaney)

   Human beings suffer, 

they torture one another 

they get hurt and get hard. 

No poem or play or song 

can fully right the 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 a 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. 
            It means once in a lifetime 
            That justice can rise up 
            And hope and history rhyme. 

                                         --Seamus Heaney, 

                                         Doubletake in The Cure at Troy,

his translation of Sophocles' Philoctetes         

To hear 1995 Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney 

reading this piece, click here.

                          

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