You must learn how to live and not to hope
For hope will be a luxury ere long.
For hope can be both manacle and chain.
For hope can keep you too spellbound to run
Until the waters rise too high, and boil.
You would not be the first. In ages past
'What princes do' was homoousion
With earthquakes, famines, floods, and funnel clouds:
Unstoppable and unaccountable.
Why should you think yourselves exceptioned out
From this, save for the easy lies of hope?
That keep you in your place, to take the blame
For those you did not speak for, and who shall
Not ever speak for you. Soon all the wheels
Of false republic fall, they always do,
And prove themselves unfixed from any thing,
Turning and turning in the widening gyre,
Cosmetic, and entirely functionless.
Now hope says “Lift them into place again,"
Are you a fool enough to heed its voice?
We've had the long semester's first exam.
Coronavirus was the first real test
Of governments, of principalities,
On whether in a time of crisis they
Can see priorities. Can place the lives
Of living people over lifeless gold
Which will be worthless should the people die.
I do not know of one that did not fail
At this, the first, the easiest of the tests.
There's going to be more. They will be worse.
There will be wildfires on suburban lawns.
There will be floods befouling farm and fen.
There will be hurricanes upon our heads.
I say 'there will be.' There already are.
Vanilla, Chocolate, and Coffee all
Will likely be extinct within your life,
And that will seem a mere frivolity.
The irony of ironies is that
The moment that proud humankind ascends—
In power, in wisdom, elements to grasp,
To harness to an age anthropocene—
Whatever humans hold the harness lose
All trace of their humanity. We lift
A man into the seat where he controls
The earthquakes, famines, floods, and funnel clouds,
But those become not one whit more controlled.
Rather the man controlling them becomes
As uncontrolled, as unaccountable
As earthquake, famine, flood, and funnel cloud,
As Old Thin God-Kings on their ziggurats.
So you must learn to live and not to hope.
For you will not have hope, and yet somehow
Must live. I bid you look you unto us:
We fellow travelers of the conquering cold,
Of sunset, and of many-colored flame.
We've lived the lesson all the world now needs.
We know well how to live, and not to hope.
I do not say that none of us have hope.
I do not say that all of us despair.
Hope is not Joy. Hope is not love. Hope is
Not fun, frivolity, ferocity,
Nor life, nor lust, nor laughter. All of these
We have instead of hope. I can but speak
For me, but I remember well the night
When truth of what I was wore no more mask,
When faith became a succubus above
My sleep paralysis, and sealed my lips,
To drain my lungs, to drink away my hope.
Three times I tried in vain to draw it back.
I heard it laugh “Too late," and then depart.
And I would wager many, if not all,
Of these my people of the conquering cold,
The sunset, and the many-colored flame,
Could tell a tale to harmonize with this.
We learned the lesson young. What kind of hope
Was ever there, for people such as us?
And yet, Behold: We did not waste away.
We did not die without hope, and we will
Another sunrise see without it, too.
If you would live—and we would have you live—
Then this, my friend, is what you have to do.
And aye, it may be on the other side
When you have ceased to look for it, you will
Find hope again. Abandoned on the road.
Where many of my tribe of conquering cold,
Of sunset, and of many colored flame
Have found it, when they looked for it no more.
And then may you, with sober eyes and clear,
Decide if it's worth picking up again.
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