Despondency
April 26 2023
When I consider my state of melancholy
what comes to mind
is despair.
Say it out loud
and the word itself
comes out like a sigh,
not so much ending
as fading away
in a spent exhalation of gloom;
a deflated balloon
shrivelled and limp
and emptied of air.
Like onomatopoeia
it sounds like what it is.
Literally, the loss of hope;
of espoir
and espèrance.
It's not me, it’s the world.
Of which we have proven ourselves
unworthy;
squandering our birthright,
reneging on our God-given role
as custodian.
And even if you don't believe
in a higher power,
it would be hard to deny
how greedy we've been
how irresponsible.
Of course melancholy
doesn't need much help.
Because what could sound more despondent
than black bile,
a sour bilious darkness
that leaves you passive
and powerless.
When even false hope
offers rescue and respite.
If, that is, hope can ever be false.
Because the feeling is real
even if prospects are bleak.
Just a glimmer
from the bottom of a deep crevasse,
straining to look up
its steep-sided walls
at the small window of light.
When I wrote that Tucker Carlson poem (Shattered Glass), the opening litany included false hope, and that's what it was going to be about.
It was originally (I think):
False hope
phoney wars
imagined fears.
But then fake news fit better with the other two, while false hope seemed a distraction. And from there, the poem ended up taking me in a very different direction. (After all, I’m not really writing; I’m taking dictation!)
So I decided to try again.
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