No Christmas celebration this year, instead Maqluba with beloveds and a vigil in Te Whanganui-a-Tara. Simply grateful for every mouthful and to be together.
Sharing a wish that politicians stop their public readings of Seamus Heaney’s powerful words on seachange, and start living the poem instead.
From Seamus Heaney’s The Cure at Troy: A Version of Sophocles’ Philoctetes
Human beings suffer, They torture one another, They get hurt and get hard. No poem or play or song Can fully right a wrong Inflicted and endured. The innocent in gaols beat on their bars together. A hunger-striker's father stands in the graveyard dumb. The police widow in veils faints at the funeral home. History says, don’t hope On this side of the grave. But then, once in a lifetime The longed-for tidal wave Of justice can rise up, And hope and history rhyme. So hope for a great sea-change On the far side of revenge. Believe that further shore Is reachable from here. Believe in miracle And cures and healing wells. Call miracle self-healing: The utter, self-revealing Double-take of feeling. If there’s fire on the mountain Or lightning and storm And a god speaks from the sky That means someone is hearing The outcry and the birth-cry of new life at its term...
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