<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div dir="auto" style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div class=""><div class="" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 20px; line-height: normal;"><span class="">Hope</span><span class="" style="font-stretch: normal; font-size: 21px; line-height: normal;"> </span></div></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Hope is not about some future meadow, <br class="">Hope is no triumphal march toward some brighter,<br class="">bloodless field. Neither lighting a candle, <br class="">nor cursing the darkness, nor calling the glass half full-- <br class="">hope is this half-empty tumbler turning cartwheels <br class="">above the chasm. You, for example--<br class="">poised above your own private precipice, <br class="">bruised and bloodied, sifting through the ashes <br class="">of ten thousand burnt offerings. <br class="">Don’t scatter those ashes. Don’t stuff the corpses <br class="">into body bags just yet. Don’t launch a fleet <br class="">of skyrockets to cheer up Gehenna. Don’t pretend <br class="">that you’re still hungry, like those battle-blind birds<br class="">pecking for seeds between the corpses. <br class="">Hope is not an appetite for this or that concocted future. <br class="">It is the present seeking itself, the present-- <br class="">unlearning the past, agnostic of the future-- <br class="">breathing, in its chains, like the sea.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>- Richard Schiffman</div></div></body></html>