Today's poem is based on a passage from Charles Dickens A Tale of Two Cities, which I'm reading again after many years. Yes, that one that begins, ‘it was the best of times, it was the worst of times'…

Set in London & Paris around the French Revolution the story follows Charles Darnay, Sydney Carton, and Lucie Manette and circles around Dickens's usual themes of injustice, sacrifice and resurrection.

He wrote it in 1859, a time when the powers-that-be in Victorian Britain were rightly anxious about class unrest, as a warn to his readers: heal inequity now or risk violent upheaval later.

The book ends on Carton’s redemptive sacrifice, evidence that individual acts of love can seed a better future.

This was the passage in Dickens book.

I see a brilliant city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss, and, in their long struggles to be truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, through long years to come, I see the evil of this time and of the previous time of which this is the natural birth, gradually making expiation for itself and wearing out.

And here is the poem:

The People Leading Liberty to Peace

(with apologies to Charles Dickens)

I see a brilliant place
And a brilliant people rising
from this abyss.

And in their long struggles
to be truly free, in their triumphs
and defeats, through the years to come
I see the evil of this time,
and of the previous time
the natural birth
of what has been into what is,
that part of our past
gradually making expiation
for itself, at last
wearing itself out.

All power to you, dear people.
as you turn to kiss those aged, blaming,
bleeding mouths goodbye. It took my own people
a hundred years, and still we cry our cries
but no longer, at least, suffer the wailing worst,
the murder of the innocent. We send you
our puny aid and our mighty wishes
that you may find the power you need,
soonest, to let go of the ancient grim
and grasping hands, so we all can rise,
and this time rise and rise
through your history's heaving,
into rebirthing the peace of the world
long forgotten, and bring it here to be.