“Prayer”
By Kevin Hart
O come, in any way you want,
In morning sunlight fooling in the leaves
Or in thick bouts of rain that soak my head
Because of what the darkness said
Or come, though far too slowly for my eye to see,
Like a dark hair that fades to gray
Come with the wind that wraps my house
Or winter light that slants upon a page
Because the beast is stirring in its cage
Or come in raw and ragged smells
Of gumleaves dangling down at noon
Or in the undertow of love
When she’s away
Because a night creeps through the day
Come as you used to, years ago,
When I first fell for you
In the deep calm of an autumn morning
Beginning with the cooing of a dove
Because of love, the lightest love
Or if that’s not your way these days
Because of me, because
Of something dead in me,
Come like a jagged knife into my gut
Because your touch will surely cut
Come any way you want
But come
This poem arrived via Padraig Ó Tuama's Poetry Unbound narration. I connected it to a favorite poem by Czeslaw Milsoz, On Prayer.
Each poet addresses this phenomena, one pleading with it to return, the other likening it to a velvet bridge that we all walk no matter what.
The what is that haunting question: what is this reaching? Whom to?
Some turn to prayer in desperation. Some in daily attentions. If we do participate with it, if we pray, it is often with the attention to that which is outside of our conscious selves. We invoke, request, plead. We wish to make our voice a two-way street.
Quiet prayer, loud prayer, silent prayer: poets have advised us about praying for millennia. With good reason. We cannot accept our solipsism, it is a patent lie. It seems to me this old way of opening whatever veils separate us (from each other, from the "other side") has remained a vital presence because it is useful. I think it is like metaphor: it transfixes, grafts, fuses the unlikely, the disparate. An orison makes the now of our lives large, alive, connected. Even when it cuts us to our core.
