Listen to this

That hope and history might rhyme

Mark Smith

This is a lazy column. Over the past week or so and mindful of the impending end of month deadline I began thinking of some meaningful message that I might impart at the turn of another year. It’s the kind of thing that many newspaper columnists also set their minds to. I was reading one such offering yesterday in The Herald a Scottish broadsheet. The writer, Ron Ferguson drew on the writings of the Irish poet Seamus Heaney to convey some of his New Year’s hopes. Now I’m generally a bit reluctant to quote poetry or literature because it might suggest that I’m well-read in this field, which I’m not. Unlike much poetry, though, I can generally make sense of Heaney’s work. And I did go and hear him speak a few years back at the Edinburgh Book Festival. A point that Ron Ferguson makes in his column is that at cataclysmic times we need poets to help us understand and indeed to hope. The hubris of politicians and the dogma of policy makers won’t see us through. They are part of the problem.

It has been a cataclysmic year and in places like Gaza it is ending in that same vein. Closer to home, more and more people become caught up in the credit crunch, although probably not those who deserve to be its victims. I thought about some of this on the bus to work this morning. Coming up Leith Street I saw the long term victims of a social and economic system that, surprise, surprise, didn’t trickle down its largesse on those at the bottom of the heap. They stood outside the emergency housing office with their bottles of cheap cider.

The bus I get passes through a couple of housing schemes on its way to the Sheriff Courts. It usually carries young men and women from these schemes, wasted from their heroin or methadone addictions, to be sentenced to the latest installment in their miserable lives. They parade their lives for all to see and hear, shouting the most personal of information into mobile phones. Any boundaries or sense of dignity they may once have had are long since gone. The lawyers who will represent them get on at the foot of Leith Walk, well-dressed, well-heeled, briefs under their arms. They live in different worlds as, I suppose, do I. This short bus journey is perhaps the only thing we share.

I keep expecting to recognise one of those on their way to Court or standing outside the housing office, from my past years in residential child care in the city, but I don’t. Maybe some of those I worked with haven’t ended up rootless and homeless. Maybe some of their faces are so ravaged that I don’t recognise them.

Today the bus itself is quieter than usual. The Courts are closed over the Holiday period. I have a bit more peace than usual to think my thoughts. Then the bus turns into Princes Street and up the North Bridge. And the low mood brought on by the sight of the homeless drinkers suddenly lifts as I look out onto one of my favourite views, that from the top deck of a bus going up the Bridges. The Scotsman Building ahead, the Castle and Princes Street Gardens to my right. Even the new Council Offices to my left look sleek and attractive. And beyond that the sea. The sight is particularly stunning on mornings like this, cold crisp and sunny, the Christmas Ferris Wheel providing a colourful backdrop to the Scott Monument. It is an uplifting sight, one that says that all is not doom and gloom, one that says this is a magnificent city in which to live.

So as one year draws to a close and another beckons we need to reconcile what is depressing, what is worrying and what is downright wrong, arguably evil, with a capacity to hope. This is where Heaney comes in. He tells us in his play, The Cure at Troy

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.

So let’s hang on to hope on this side of the grave, and maybe our hopes and history will rhyme. Maybe the collapse in the financial markets is that once in a lifetime opportunity to unleash a tidal wave of justice. Maybe we can look beyond revenge towards reconciliation. Lets hope, indeed believe that 2009 can take us some way towards that further shore.