Читать книгу Hope, a Myth Reawakened - Lillian Moats - Страница 11

II. IT WAS NOT LIKE THAT

If ever you have imagined her story,

you may have pictured Hope

striving to escape the urn like the others—

perhaps only a hairsbreadth from freedom

when the lid shut.

It was not like that. She felt no urgency.

Little did she suspect the possibility of escape

would be lost so quickly.

But none of the Qualities could have known.

My mother Hope explains she was

taking in the changes; and of course, she would be

less inclined than most to expect the worst.

She has had ample ages of confinement to regre—

she would say ‘to revisit’ that day.

(Regret is such a wasteful emotion.)

For ages, she measured days as humans do,

in the perpetual revolution of light and darkness.

Her only light came from the movement

of rays through chinks in the earthenware rim.

Spotlights—now intense, now faint, now flickering—

glanced off the walls of her cell, day after day.

She was certain she would be freed.

But would her freedom come at the hands

of the one who released the others?

Or would one of the others return for her?

Whatever All they once constituted

could never be whole without her.

Perhaps that Quality who looked so intently

into her face would recognize her absence.

At first, her eyes were trained on the rim.

From time to time she flew there—

if those few strokes of her wings

could be called “flight.”

She hovered long at each cleft but could make out

only the changing sky and stars,

a glimpse of sun or moon.

As she grew accustomed to the patterns of light

over the interior of the urn,

she repeatedly predicted the instant

of her own release:

when this ray crosses that one;

when that oval of light flares bright;

when that spot fades to black.

On the floor of her cell, she paced the rough,

concentric grooves left by the potter’s fingers.

Hope’s feet grew sore, then calloused,

but it was difficult to stop.

The repetition calmed, even mesmerized her.

Mother desires neither food nor drink.

But every Quality must sleep.

Wrapping her wings about her, she gave in to it.

The embrace of her feathers

offered the only comfort she could provide herself.

Pacing expectantly, scanning for hopeful signs,

sleeping when she could resist no longer:

epochs passed like this

before she slumbered uninterruptedly.