Hope...

 

The winter sun, poor ghost of itself,

hung milky and wan behind layers of cloud

above the huddled roofs of the town.

Buildings war-burnt and scarred,

tall trees charred and buckled, grotesque

monuments to what once thrived here.

Where was wisdom? Where was hope?

Had they become collateral damage too?

The people crept silently and wept openly,

fearful that their lives were forever done.

 

Yet there remained a single tree of resilience

where hope grew on the shoulders of wisdom.....

 

 

My poem's prompt comes from the opening line of the novel referenced here:

‘The winter sun, poor ghost of itself, hung milky and wan behind layers of cloud above the huddled roofs of the town.’- Thomas Mann, Tonio Kroger, Penguin, 1955