Dear Readers, I’m sorry to be so late with this “next” post. But you all know that sometimes we seem to be having even more difficulties than we usually do.
And sometimes the world seems to give us even more causes for grief than it commonly does.
Things like a President expressing his liking and admiration for a foreign dictator who deprives his people of truth in order better to deceive and control them, who puts scores of people belonging to a minority into concentration camps, subjecting them to deprivations and tortures hidden from the general view. Things like historic, horrific fires driving people from their homes, killing untold thousands of animals, and burning up thousands of trees on which all forms of life depend in part for air that we breathe — while the Governor of the state suffering the worst devastation has to remind people that the spreading holocaust is climate change in action. And on and on, all of which made me put aside The New York Times and CNN in a very short time yesterday morning, my feelings being driven to their knees by the weight.
And then, about an hour later, I came on this poem while reading haiku by Basho (translated by Sam Hamill):
With dewdrops dripping,
I wish somehow I could wash
this perishing world.
A poem in reply:
Citizen of Dark Times
by Kim Stafford
Agenda in a time of fear: Be not afraid.
When things go wrong, do right.
Set out by the half-light of the seeker.
For the well-lit problem begins to heal.
Learn tropism toward the difficult.
We have not arrived to explain, but to sing.
Young idealism ripens into an ethical life.
Prune back regret to let faith grow.
When you hit rock bottom, dig farther down.
Grief is the seed of singing, shame the seed of song.
Keep seeing what you are not saying.
Plunder your reticence.
Songbird guards a twig, its only weapon a song.
A wonderful poem, worthy of his wonderful father, William Stafford!