grey day, sunny outlook

I found this poem while engaged in the Sisyphean task of cleaning my home office last weekend and thought I'd share it with y'all. It conjured up the slow summer sunrises of London and renewed my faith that we humans are connected in ways we can't begin to fathom, but some of us keep trying to see. I hope it's as powerfully evocative for you.

Blake

I watch William Blake, who spotted angels
every day in treetops
and met God on the staircase
of his little house and found light in grimy alleys--

Blake, who died
singing gleefully
in a London thronged
with streetwalkers, admirals, and miracles,

William Blake, engraver, who labored
and lived in poverty but not despair,
who received burning signs
from the sea and from the starry sky,

who never lost hope, since hope
was always born anew like breath,
I see those who walked like him on graying streets,
headed toward the dawn's rosy orchid.

Adam Zagajewski
translated from the Polish, by Claire
in The New Yorker, August 13, 2007