Hope

Many years ago, I stumbled across the poem Wild Geese by Mary Oliver. It's a poem that so beautifully captures the essence of belonging and a sense of ease about our place in the world. It moves from a sense of oppression to the joy and openness of nature and the wider world. A poem of great comfort and hope.

 

You do not have to be good. 

You do not have to walk on your knees 

for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. 

You only have to let the soft animal of your body 

love what it loves. 

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. 

Meanwhile the world goes on. 

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain 

are moving across the landscapes, 

over the prairies and the deep trees, 

the mountains and the rivers. 

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, 

are heading home again. 

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, 

the world offers itself to your imagination, 

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting - 

over and over announcing your place 

in the family of things.

 

I find echoes of that poem, and that same sense of hope, in Now We Are Free by Hans Zimmer, from the film Gladiator. A beautiful piece of music.