Hope Stolen Child

I had a dream the week before the presidential inauguration. I was standing in a burned out field, black as far as the eye could see in every direction. In 1996 I visited Yellowstone after the devastating fires the season before, my dream was black like that. I turned away and as my eyes returned to the devastation there were people in the field picking something up off the ground. It is how I imagine the Pelennor Fields to look after the great battle at the end of the Third Age. Slowly they began to walk toward and then past me with the object in their hand. As dreams do, the scene shifts and they are walking toward me again, each one in succession making eye contact, none speaking, then tossing a single long stem red rose into a vehicle parked next to me. They never said a word. The faces were of the leaders present and past in the Palestinian Israel wars. The last one reached up and slammed the back door of the vehicle, which I then realize is a hearse. The hearse pulls away. From the very firsy moment of the dream until the last, the Waterboys song and WB Yeats poen Stolen Child is playing in the background.

The Stolen Child WB Yeats

Come away, human child
to the water
Come away, human child
to the water and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand
for the world's more full of weeping than you can understand

Where dips the rocky highland
of Sleuth Wood in the lake
There lies a leafy island
where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water rats;
there we've hid our faery vats
Full of berries
and of reddest stolen cherries

Come away, human child
to the water
Come away, human child
to the water and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand
for the world's more full of weeping than you can understand

Where the wave of moonlight glosses
the dim gray sands with light
Far off by furthest Rosses
we foot it all the night
Weaving olden dances
mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
to and fro we leap
ANd chase the frothy bubbles
while the world is full of troubles
And is anxious in its sleep

Come away, human child
to the water
Come away, human child
to the water and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand
for the world's more full of weeping than you can understand

Where the wandering water gushes
from the hills above Glen-Car
In pools among the rushes
the scarce could bathe a star
We seek for slumbering trout
and whispering in their ears
We give them unquiet dreams;
leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
over the young streams

Away with us he's going
the solemn-eyed:
He'll hear no more the lowing
of the calves on the warm hillside;
Or the kettle on the hob
sing peace into his breast
Or see the brown mice bob
around and around the oatmeal-chest

For he comes, the human child
to the water
He comes, the human child
to the water and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand
from a world more full of weeping than he can understand
Human child
human child
With a faery, hand in hand
from a world more full of weeping than he can understand...
than he can understand...
he can understand...