HONORING THE SOUTH AFRICAN THEOLOGIAN,

DESMOND TUTUS

“THE CURE OF TROY“

SEAMUS HEANEY

Human beings suffer.

They torture one another.

They get hurt and get hard.

No poem or play or song

Can fully right a wrong

Inflicted and endured.

History says, Don’t hope

On the 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 miracle self-healing,

The utter self revealing

Double-take of feeling.

If there’s fire on the mountain

And lightening and 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.