Living Is Longing Poem by Shalom Freedman

LIVING IS LONGING

Living is longing
And in old age
Longing is for the longing of youth
Of ‘only just begun’ of ‘so many roads ahead’.
Longing is for when we had no limit to our dream and hope.

And now
When Sadness sees how little we have made of all those roads
And how many small sordid corners we remain trapped in-
When Sadness is Regret
we can never live such beginning again-

I look quietly at my wife’s small grandchildren
And take Hope

Believing they too will find
Something of
Beauty and Love
on long roads
of their own.