Litany

O you gods, you long-limbed animals, you astride the sea and you unhammocked in the cyprus grove and you with your hair full of horses, please. My thoughts have turned from the savor of plums to the merits of pity—touch and interrupt me, chasten me with waking, humble me for wonder again. Seed god and husk god, god of the open palm, you know me, you know my mettle. See, my wrists are small. O you, with glass-colored wind at your call and you, whose voice is soft as a turned page, whose voice unrolls paper, whose voice returns air to its forms, send me a word for faith that also means his thrum,his coax and surge and her soft hollow, please—friend gods, lend me a word that means what I would ask him for so when he says: You give it all away, I can say: I am not sorry. I sing.