72 Prayer poems

Father of all! in every age, In every clime adored, By saint, by savage, and by sage, Jehovah, Jove, or Lord! Thou Great First Cause, least understood: Who all my sense confined To know but this—that thou art good, And that myself am blind: Yet gave me, in this dark estate, To see the good from ill; And binding Nature fast in fate, Left free the human will. What conscience dictates to be done, Or warns me not to do, This, teach me more than Hell to shun, That, more than Heaven pursue. What blessings thy free bounty gives, Let me not cast away; For God is paid when man receives, To enjoy is to obey. Yet not to earth’s contracted span, Thy goodness let me bound, Or think thee Lord alone of man, When thousand worlds are round: Let not this weak, unknowing hand Presume thy bolts to throw, And deal damnation round the land, On each I judge thy foe. If I am right, thy grace impart, Still in the right to stay; If I am wrong, oh teach my heart To find a better way. Save me alike from foolish pride, Or impious discontent, At aught thy wisdom has denied, Or aught thy goodness lent. Teach me to feel another’s woe, To hide the fault I see; That mercy I to others show, That mercy show to me. Mean though I am, not wholly so Since quickened by thy breath; Oh lead me wheresoe’er I go, Through this day’s life or death. This day, be bread and peace my lot: All else beneath the sun, Thou know’st if best bestowed or not, And let thy will be done. To thee, whose temple is all space, Whose altar, earth, sea, skies! One chorus let all being raise! All Nature’s incense rise!

prays for birds before an ancient icon— a stray cat. The inbred need to pray is what makes God necessary, and not, she says, the other way around; beyond that it’s all mystery, so don’t question why Man creates gods that demand sacrifice, condemning mortals to spend their lives trying to praise godhead into mercy. Better instead to ask the frog to bless the fly, and, once the cheese is in the trap, to beg forgiveness from the rat.

O poetry, visit this house often, imbue my life with success, leave me not alone, give me a wife and home. Take this curse off of early death and drugs, make me a friend among peers, lend me love, and timeliness. Return me to the men who teach and above all, cure the hurts of wanting the impossible through this suspended vacuum. 1969

After Thomas Hardy The milkmaids say Pray for their speech is reserved, fixed here in circles of opalized light. Presenting themselves without fancy or choice chapped hands on the full udder’s verge, y’know — cream-skinned, gathering toad spume on skirts relentlessly cracking the snails underfoot — a century later & more their compeers bow heads to these luminous fields made of ether, of blue & extravagant air, calling up with the same nimble fingers their ciphered familiars, girl-souls at large in a nonhuman hour. Speaking their argot & screen-practiced moue. Not to you, with your paper, your man-heavy shoes, untouched by the mulch of the digital yard! They only gaze rapt at threshold, milk spilled. No purchase for you here,Sir, & no clue —

Thunderer     God of the turbulent sky     may my turbulent mind shape for my people rain clouds beans pumpkins and yams. East Spirit Dawn Spirit     may birds awaken in the forest of teeth whose river     your color     must say frozen mountains’ prayer that you will loosen them. Spirit of the North whose star is our white mark like the blaze we chop in the black bark where the trail home divides even in our homes we need you to guide. Spirit of the Sunset West may gray clouds hiding friends from me glow like yours that we grope toward each other through a vivid rose. Spirit of the South direction of warm wind warm rain and the winter sun like a pale painting of a morning glory help me     Spirit     that in my mind humble things a man may give to his child may grow the blue of berry orange of squash crimson of radish yellow of corn when the green of even the tallest pine is wolf tooth white. Spirit of the Earth keeper of Mother Father Sister Brother loved ones all once praying as I pray or in some other way Spirit     the black dirt is like the black cover of a book whose words are black ink I can not read but I place my brown hand on snow and pray that more than snow may melt.

Change, move, dead clock, that this fresh day May break with dazzling light to these sick eyes. Burn, glare, old sun, so long unseen, That time may find its sound again, and cleanse Whatever it is that a wound remembers After the healing ends. Originally appeared in the October 1947 issue of Poetry magazine.

Release, please, this bound one by the power of your right hand. Receive the song of your people, exalt us, Lord, and make us pure. Almighty one, protect those who seek your oneness: Bless them and cleanse them—bestow upon them your merciful justice. Mighty one, holy one, in your goodness guide your assembly. Turn, sole one on high, to those who remember your sanctity, and accept our cry and plea— You who fathom all mysteries.

Wherein she martyrs the mirror: this carnival of stone, her lips dilate the negation—space into starpoint Wherein she, to be both sacrum & wrist— neither the fugitive epidermis, nor the unlocked ashblack— sovereigns the shadow swell as love Wherein she ardors the emptiness open, proof the unanchored Spirit of my silence, her revisions clothing my brightest orgasm— Wherein she says, I can hear you, the seed under the belly’s flesh—love the far shore, she says, For She withdraws the Spring wild Thrust in her mother’s surrender, iron ocean blackened to aurora.

Your petitions—though they continue to bear just the one signature—have been duly recorded. Your anxieties—despite their constant, relatively narrow scope and inadvertent entertainment value—nonetheless serve to bring your person vividly to mind. Your repentance—all but obscured beneath a burgeoning, yellow fog of frankly more conspicuous resentment—is sufficient. Your intermittent concern for the sick, the suffering, the needy poor is sometimes recognizable to me, if not to them. Your angers, your zeal, your lipsmackingly righteous indignation toward the many whose habits and sympathies offend you— these must burn away before you’ll apprehend how near I am, with what fervor I adore precisely these, the several who rouse your passions.

If I were in a book it would be the book in which some lesser angel bemoans the state of my soul and is comforted for it and is corrected for it by some greater angel who knows as the reader knows that it is not one’s soul that suffers the indignities of ignobility: the inability to curb the petty smallness of spirit, ungladness in the company of bureaucrats, anger’s decay, in the sense that my soul itself cannot be harmed nor tarnished though it can witness my sorrow on finding that illness alters me from the self I thought I’d more or less known. What can one do about one’s nature? I look at the spider that’s finally restrung its great wheel away from the door. I’d like to close the door, go away, leaving the spider be. I’d like to preclude the possibility of angel, as of prey.