There Is No Hope for Those Who Hope Too Much
A Poem for the Lunar New Year, The Year of the Wood Dragon, About the Need for Hopeless Hope
There is no hope for those who hope too much,
Here to build a world where evils cease,
Eager to embrace a world at peace,
Yearning for Utopia, as such.
Even so, no truth ought such hope crush,
As cynicism has the longer lease,
Relying on self-interest to increase,
Offering a prickly underbrush.
For hopeless hope has much to recommend it.
The best need not eviscerate the good.
Hope of “should” can clear a path to “would,”
Even though it breaks the heart to tend it.
Dragons are the dreamers to defend it,
Resisting blame, as only dragons could,
Aware their role might be misunderstood,
Given that their dream's best chance might end it.
On hopeless hope depends all compromise.
Nor ought one undermine it, were one wise.
© by Nicholas Gordon
To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/there50.html. For more poems for the Lunar New Year, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/chinesenewyearpoems.html .