"Of all good things that mortals lack,
Hope in the soul alone stays back."
~ Gabriele Faremo, "Fabulum Centrum," 1563
I think of poor Pandora, pawn like us among other
pawns in all stories of conflict, gamed by those
gloating with power. Prometheus steals fire
from the gods, Zeus gives Pandora to Prometheus'
brother Epimetheus; and she, overcome by curiosity,
opens the box left in her care. We know the rest
of this myth— how every wraith that bolted out
now sows sickness and death, calamity, misfortune,
war; every evil in the world. In Odilon Redon's 1912
painting, what she holds to her chest against
the pastel-flecked hills looks so harmless— no
larger than a Whitman's sampler, now on sale
at the drugstore for $5.97 and filled with peanut
clusters, dark chocolate buttercream, vanilla cream,
nut fudge. I suppose if you eat too many of these,
eventually they'll kill you, after first raising
your A1C numbers. But here, at the end of November,
I don't want to press the forward button yet; I'm not
eager to cross into a new year that's already
frothing at the mouth, threatening to dissolve
every solid pillar that held us up.
Only hope remains in the box, which
either means that humankind still stands a chance;
or that hope, trapped in there, can't do very much.
