"Hope"

                      Dear _____,

                      Every year on this day

                      for many years, I rum-

                      inate on this word and

                      at last I have an of-

                      fer to make to you, of

                      how to understand it.

                      I have to admit, this

                      comes on no authority

                      of revelation, but of

                      attrition, against so

                      many suppositions of

                      what hope is.

                      On a Christmas Eve

                      long ago, I watched

                      my mother walk to her

                      desk and sit down.

                      She opened a drawer

                      and withdrew a card

                      of her stationery, 

                      opened her inkwell 

                      and withdrew her pen

                      from its cap, and set

                      about the project of

                      inscribing to me a

                      message to accompany

                      her gift to me.

                      Abruptly, she turned

                      to my father, held up

                      her pen, and said,

                      "Here. That's all I 

                      can do."

                      Within two days, she

                      died of surgeries for

                      an unsuspected tumor

                      of the brain. She had

                      commenced her inscrip-

                      tion, and my father,

                      thinking her only the

                      worse for Champagne,

                      gallantly completed

                      and signed the note.

                      I was terrified; they

                      would be horrified,

                      with this disclosure,

                      but for their know-

                      ing that the nature of

                      my life would mean not

                      raising a family, and

                      having to give their

                      gift to me by other

                      means. I credit them

                      both with this percep-

                      tion, some many years

                      before I could accept

                      it. They didn't like it.

                      But they did love me.

                      Now, I will offer a

                      way of assimilating

                      this popular word. It 

                      is natural, possibly

                      the ultimate struc-

                      turing energy of our

                      system. It is not, I 

                      am viscerally certain,

                      a noun. It is only a

                      verb; not an object,

                      but an aspect of the 

                      act of living that is

                      passed on only congen-

                      itally, and so absurd

                      to address eschatol-

                      ogically. 

                      I am glad to have a

                      card signed by one of

                      them for them both,

                      with the material

                      verb being the only

                      word my mother was

                      able to write. Es-

                      chewing, as we did,

                      even the pronoun of

                      the first person,

                      that's the only word

                      in her hand and the

                      last one there would

                      be. 

                      Now we come to an oc-

                      casion renowned for its

                      invigoration of what is

                      called, "hope," and one

                      does not demur because it

                      simply isn't possible

                      to interrupt that act.

                      Moreover, anything which

                      encourages an apprecia-

                      tion of its universality

                      is not to be refused.

                      But you and I turn to 

                      lifetimes of seeing this

                      energy enacted in a vari-

                      ety of extremes, no lambs,

                      no shepherds attending, in

                      a very sweet awe at the

                      gift that it is. It is

                      fundamentally maternal,

                      inextinguishably maternal

                      of course, to be conscious

                      of it with almost every

                      breath. But it is assured,

                      it is secured within all

                      human life.

                      I used to worry, that hope

                      is an obligation; I nearly

                      would argue that it is,

                      but one need not. What is,

                      may I propose, an obliga-

                      tion, is the certitude

                      that at the end of the day

                      this is our energy, and

                      that we are its evidence

                      in what we give.

                      Not that one could know.

                      I would just like you,

                      dear _____, to understand

                      I am grateful to be your 

                      contemporary, and to know

                      I am.

Franz Josef Haydn

Die Jahreszeiten

  Komm, holder Lenz!

1799

René Jacobs

RIAS Chamber Choir

Freiburg Baroque Orchestra

Harmonia Mundi, 2004©