botanical illustration of mandrake

A Quiet Root

We comb through hundreds of literary magazines to bring you one stellar poem or flash fiction piece every weekday.

“For Hope” by Roelof ten Napel

translated from the Dutch by Judith Wilkinson

Does hope bypass the sombre houses?
By what light does it find the door
of those who can’t wait for it any longer,
now that the hasty evening demands haste,
the night keeps reminding us of
unsettled scores? Might as well
start without hope.

Read it in Anthropocene