Hope

Ah! Hope, thou false Idol; iconized by Idealism,

False guard; false watch-keeping thy believers.

Hark now! Like the traveling lady who doth hear the sounds of the cutpurses upon the green,

Riding astride on their impious black mules; Anxious to be the source of evil

To a propitious young maiden of such paramount hope as Mlle Pompadour.

Thou hath the acquaintance of all,

Even though thou art as egocentric as the chattiest of women

Who but emerge at a grand ball.

Thou danceth but with whom you please,

Though when a male wall-flower be set aside,

Thou neglecteth his sorrowful eye with utmost aloofness,

And precedeth faintly till the e’en is through.

Alas! Betimes one sees with their own eye

The product of thy veritable evil

Through thy selfish disregard

For the human people.

Ay, the inklings point directly to Poverty; which one can uncover in any English cottage;

Beside an empty hearth, on the shredded cot, and within the sickly eyes of a broken child.

Wherefore dost thou avoid care and nurturance, friend - enemy?

Many a men and women see thee as a kind young mother

Who reduced the statement; ‘Young brides are happy mothers made’ into what is presently known

As an deceitful olde maxim; worthy of no body’s musing.

What, now, did such an early binding make of thee, gentle Hope?

An insufferable young bride; who be cool and bitter after a history of unpardonable misery and spite,

Though who shall anon be angry and coarse.

Thou art cruel in thy fear,

For when a prisoner of a dark and mucky cell

Presses his hollow hungry cheek

Against the wintry lattice,

And sees thee illuminated by the silver disc of night,

Thou turneth thy back on him; No longer weeping o’er sorrows sincere.

Thou promoteth peace and tranquility,

Yet thou let everything be an obstacle to thy assigned quest,

And your Holy Grail be naught but a lost cause.

Thy nurturing love is nothing but piercing,

A sting slick and sweet upon entry, but rough and bitter upon its exodus.

Look at her; she be far too concerned with herself to fret o’er other’s predicaments.

Though thy cruelty seems evenly allotted,

Thy morals remain wholly steady,

And thy fear quite ordinary.

Thou turneth thy back on me when I seeketh thy presence in a familiar hell,

Even though thy company be but the space between the iron bars in my cell.

Thou art as unpersuasive as Death,

Thy opinion be as marked and unaffected as that murderer’s,

Though thou clash with said Death in the sense that thou hath rhythmic breath, coming and going,

Hope, coming and going.

A U T H O R: A U D I E S C O T T