Prospects

We have set out from here for the sublime

Pastures of summer shade and mountain stream;

I have no doubt we shall arrive on time.

Is all the green of that enameled prime

A snapshot recollection or a dream?

We have set out from here for the sublime

Without provisions, without one thin dime,

And yet, for all our clumsiness, I deem

It certain that we shall arrive on time.

No guidebook tells you if you'll have to climb

Or swim. However foolish we may seem,

We have set out from here for the sublime

And must get past the scene of an old crime

Before we falter and run out of steam,

Riddled by doubt that we'll arrive on time.

Yet even in winter a pale paradigm

Of birdsong utters its obsessive theme.

We have set out from here for the sublime;

I have no doubt we shall arrive on time.

Copyright Credit: Anthony Hecht, "Prospects" from Flight Among the Tombs: Poems, copyright © 1995, 1996 by Anthony E. Hecht. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.