How many ? ten or fifteen years ago?
that hope was useless I already knew?
How could one be so lucid and yet do
so little to accommodate the facts?
Hope against hope, like all brave
women hoping in vain to save
something from the debris of a life?
I do not think that this was so
or else this knowledge under all the acts
of every day flowed underground
and inaccessible, the rocks above
still solid and enough to found
hope for the future and a better love,
shoring up bridges over care and strife.
Bridges however strong
can only last so long.
The impulse of a single act of war
will bring them down
and through the limestone flaw
the full flood emerge and drown
all our land. And indeed maybe
through all these years we looked and did not see,
the end of love always a foregone conclusion.
Saverne, 24th February 1996
