Prayers Public and Private

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i

God! 

ii 

No, Father, I never got over 
that first rush of anger 
like wings folding round me 
as I discovered the world 
was not what I thought 
it ought to be, or was, 
for angels’ feathery armpits 
brought me down quickly: 
I found earth, far from a rest, 
moulders, panders before me, 
longing for my lively flesh—
(. . . I hear promises whirring) 
I rise on my private hackles 
like my own hair growing, under, 
yes, by God, I shall grow upward 
even in my grave, and through 
blue intervals toward cirrus, 
like promises shining, and beyond, 
leaving even my dreaming behind!

iii

If memory serves me 
I’m dying to try my own way 
I said at twenty 
so left to my own devices I die 
trying daily to espouse no cause because
I’ve forgotten what it was 
I started out to say 
the day I started trying 
but it will out I’m told if 
I just stick with it which 
I do at thirty-six but 
I keep disremembering what it was I was
supposed to say but left to 
my own devices I still die trying. 

iv 

Black anger: to be bereft of God. 

v 

I 
striving for style 
in the striving stumbling 
blundering unendingly over m-my meters
fear God (Critic in Exegesis Extremus)
may like me find me not Jesus 
but a poor hung thief 
hung up wailing 
while a flow-
ering Judas 
sings.

vi

I’ve been lied to often enough
to know the truth for 
to be lied to all the time 
is good enough as true: 
words are hard 
compounded as they are 
of lies and truth together, 
I said to God. 

vii 

The courage to know the truth
was always right in my eyes, 
and to proclaim the same, the same,
until I realized 
not to know and to know not to know
was the same, though unproclaimed:
there was the surprise. 
Well, I went on, stumbling, 
lumbering in my way, 
as a bear does, 
claws full of sticky combs, 
not bothering even 
to brush aside each stinging fact
as it dived, no, not on my nose,
(a swelling nose is no news) 
but, ah, right into my bare eyes:
my tears 
with their mirrored pupils of bees
run with news, 
an agony worth noting.

viii

Catching on is wretched, 
I’d rather not know! 
(Water down the waking dawn 
to a dismal sputter . . .) 
The worm is working: 
death hunches in a corner, 
hardly meddling, idly 
unaware of his incursion. 

Happily, happily, the brazen calf burning,
unburdening ascending wisps of invective,
such gaiety in matters of life and death!
(. . . I’m slow, but so’s a waking heart.) 

ix 

O bleak excellence,
oblique of dreams, 
see the seething! 
                                    Consider 
this massive effect of human effort:
I have lost the angular visions of my youth.
I see things now in horizontal planes.
How quietly the preoccupation of my youth
became my occupation: truth. 

x 

The day my father dies 
to whom do I turn, 
to whom do I say 
“I need” and know more 
than a stone shall be given? 

xi 

God!