Hope

It hovers in dark corners
before the lights are turned on,
it shakes sleep from its eyes
and drops from mushroom gills,
it explodes in the starry heads
of dandelions turned sages,
it sticks to the wings of green angels
that sail from the tops of maples.
It sprouts in each occluded eye
of the many-eyed potato,
it lives in each earthworm segment
surviving cruelty,
it is the motion that runs the tail of a dog,
it is the mouth that inflates the lungs
of the child that has just been born.
It is the singular gift
we cannot destroy in ourselves,
the argument that refutes death,
the genius that invents the future,
all we know of God.
It is the serum which makes us swear
not to betray one another;
it is in this poem, trying to speak.

Lisel Mueller


*


Hope

She has a sense of somewhere beyond
here where there is hope. A note cools
on a piano in a room long emptied,
and so well that only the ghosts notice.
She is aware of them all; they catch her
breathing now and then, attempting to
turn around again in a space that grows
narrow but not bitter with age:
the nights end-stage perhaps, its black edge
stopped dead by a sliver of morning light;
the certainty of sorts of a day
where something, anything, might happen.
Oscillating, she assumes the shape, skin-
slipping to a place where she can wait.

Enda Coyle-Greene


*


Hope

I want to be unconstrained –
therefore I care not a fig for noble styles.
I roll up my sleeves.
The poem’s dough is rising…
Oh what a pity
that I cannot bake cathedrals…
Highness of forms –
goal of persistent longing.
Child of the present –
does your spirit not have a proper shell?
Before I die
I shall bake a cathedral.

Edith Södergran
translated from the Finland Swedish by David McDuff


*


The Lamp

Hope that looked toward the horizon
now lies in this oil lamp –
For the sky’s farther than hope can reach!
Arrows of light obliterate the distance
into blank nothingness;
then what makes my trembling fingers
gently stroke the brilliant forehead
of this oil lamp?

[1933–1935, in prison]

Ai Qing
translated from the Chinese by Robert Dorsett


*


Now

There is never an end to loss, or hope
I give up the ghost for which I grope
Over and over again saying Amen
To all that does or does not happen –
The eternal event is now, not when

Samuel Menashe

1.  JOURNEYS
Lorna Crozier    11    Packing for the Future: Instructions
Mary O’Donnell    13    The Intimate Future
Julius Chingono    14    As I Go
Jericho Brown    15    Crossing
Stanisłav Baranczak    16    If china
William Stafford    17    The Way It Is
Toon Tellegen    17    ‘I drew a line…’
Ruth Stone    18    Train Ride
Tomas Tranströmer    19    Tracks
Ted Kooser    20    November 12: 4.30 a.m.
Kerry Hardie    21    We Go On
Lal Ded    22    Two poems

2.  SOUL SEARCH
Jane Hirshfield    23    Counting, New Year’s Morning, What Powers Yet Remain to Me
Kona Macphee    25    The Gift
Denise Levertov    25    The Gift
Arun Kolatkar    26    Yeshwant Rao
Tukaram    28    ‘When he comes…’
Kathleen Ossip    30    The Believer
Dennis O’Driscoll    31    Fabrications
Edward Hirsch    35    I Was Never Able to Pray
Giorgio Caproni    36    Prayer
Arundhathi Subramaniam    37    Prayer
Jorge Luis Borges    38    Poem Written in a Copy of Beowulf
Peter Sirr    39    A Saxon Primer
Lucie Brock-Boido    40    Soul Keeping Company
Adriana Lisboa    41    Soul Washing
May Swenson    42    Question

3.  LIFE ON EARTH
Denise Levertov    43    O Taste and See
Linda Pastan    44    Imaginary Conversation
Muriel Rukeyser    45    Yes
Gregory Orr    46    To Be Alive
Rosemary Tonks    47    Addiction to an Old Mattress
Maya C. Popa    48    Dear Life
Marin Sorescu    49    With Only One Life
John McCullogh    50    Watermelon Man
Ada Limón    51    Love Poem with Apologies for My Appearance
Jack Hirschman    52    Path
Jack Gilbert    53    A Brief for the Defense
Ellen Bass    54    The Thing Is
Ellen Bass    55    Any Common Desolation
Joan Margarit    56    Love Is a Place
Jane Hirshfield    57    A Cedary Fragrance
Chase Twichell    58    Saint Animal
Mona Arshi    59    Little Prayer
William Stafford    60    Listening
Tuvia Ruebner    61    Wonder
Jeong Ho-seung    62    A Spider
Jane Hirshfield    63    The Supple Deer
Jane Hirshfield    64    The Envoy
Lynne Wycherley    65    The Substitute Sky
Marie Howe    66    Postscript

4.  ALL TOGETHER NOW
Fernando Pessoa    67    They Spoke to Me of People, and of Humanity.
Vincent Katz    68    This Beautiful Bubble
Naomi Shihab Nye    70    Gate A-4
Imtiaz Dharker    72    How to Cut a Pomegranate
Imtiaz Dharker    73    Crab-apples
John Koethe    74    Lives
Tomas Tranströmer    75    After Someone’s Death
Taha Muhammad Ali    76    Maybe
A.E. Housman    77    ‘Good creatures…’
Tomas Tranströmer    78    Alone
Jeong Ho-seung    80    To Daffodils
Sandra McPherson    81    Some Meanings of Silence
John O’Donohue    82    from For the Break-up of a Relationship
Naomi Shihab Nye    82    The Art of Disappearing
Lee Young-ju    84    Lumberjack Diary
Naomi Shihab Nye    85    Shoulders
Lauren Halderman    86    from Instead of Dying
Chen Chen    87    a small book of questions: chapter VII
Mary Jean Chan    90    Conversation with a Fantasy Mother
Jane Clarke    91    Spalls
Sandra Cisneros    92    At Fifty I Am Startled to Find I Am in My Splendor
Doug Anderson    93    Homage to Li Po
Alicia Ostriker    94    Wrinkly Lady Dancer
Lucille Clifton    95    homage to my hips
Norigo Ibaragi    96    When I Was at My Most Beautiful
Norigo Ibaragi    98    Your Own Sensitivity at Least
Linda Pastan    99    I Am Learning to Abandon the World
Joy Harjo    100    I Am a Prayer

5.  HOPE & LIGHT
Imtiaz Dharker    102    Carving
Kerry Hardie    103    Flesh
Alyson Hallett    104    Suddenly, Everything
E.E. Cummings    105    ‘i thank You God for most this amazing’
Edip Cansever    106    Table
Elena Shvarts    107    ‘Set your course by the Sun…’
Imtiaz Dharker    108    Living Space
Brendan Kennelly    109    Permission
Adam Zagajewski    109    Wake Up
Danusha Laméris    110    Insha’Allah
Miroslav Holub    111    The door
Roger Robinson    112    A Portable Paradise
Boris A. Novak    113    Decisions: II
Ivan V. Lalc    114    The Spaces of Hope
Lisel Muller    115    Hope
Enda Coyle-Greene    116    Hope
Edith Södergran    117    Hope
Ellen Cranitch    118    Hope
Ai Qing    119    The Lamp
Samuel Menashe    119    Now
Langston Hughes    120    Dreams
Langston Hughes    120    Harlem [2]
Brendan Kennelly    121    Good Souls to Survive
Molly Fisk    122    Against Panic
Michael D. Higgins    123    The Well  2
Leanne O’Sullivan    124    A Healing
Paula Meehan    125    Seed
Derek Mahon    126    Everything Is Going To Be All Right

127    Notes on the poets
153    Acknowledgements
159    Index of writers