"Everything is going to be alright" is a poem by the great poet Derek Mahon, one of my favourites. He died in 2020, and this poem blazed a little brighter in collective consciousness in that year. You can hear the poet read it here.
How should I not be glad to contemplate
the clouds clearing beyond the dormer window
and a high tide reflected on the ceiling?
There will be dying, there will be dying,
but there is no need to go into that.
The poems flow from the hand unbidden
and the hidden source is the watchful heart.
The sun rises in spite of everything
and the far cities are beautiful and bright.
I lie here in a riot of sunlight
watching the day break and the clouds flying.
Everything is going to be all right.
The poem seems to at once be addressed to the writer himself and his audience.
In the first sentence of the poem, he encourages us, and himself, to find joy beyond ourselves, our rooms, out in the world.
The inevitability of loss is acknowledged and dismissed. For a moment, death seems small compared to life.
My favourite line comes next, we ourselves are a source of the beauty of the world.
Problems are hinted at again. They are contrasted with the ancient sun that has shone on every one of us, and our cities, monuments to hope.
Sunlight runs all the way through this poem, the poet is perfectly still and at peace in the centre of the beauty he describes.
By the end it is almost impossible not to feel like our troubles are a little smaller, and we are a little bigger, and that in spite of all the things that would grieve us on our way, everything is going to be alright.