Last night I went to the 10th anniversary celebration of Poets’ Corner, a wonderful poetry group that hosts guest poets every month (Alison Flett and I were guest readers at the most recent one in January, which was the evening before friend and poet John Pfitzner passed away). Yesterday’s celebrations included a tribute to John. Sean Gilbert delivered a moving opening speech about poetry and prayer, and how poetry, like prayer, is a ‘reaching out’.
I was thinking more about this, and about how some prayers are poetry in and of themselves, if you slough away the heavy chains of association with man’s religious prejudices.
Raised a Roman Catholic, my childhood was sprinkled with learning and ‘reciting’ prayers. I wondered what poem I could rescue from a selection of prayers that I know so well. I chose seven: the ‘Our Father’, the ‘Creed’, the ‘St Patrick’s Breastplate’, a ‘Guardian Angel’ prayer, the ‘Salve Regina’, Psalm 23 (‘The Lord is my Shepherd’) and the ‘Act of Contrition’. To be consistent I took the text from here.
you are the banished
Almighty guide descended
eyes of earth toward evil resolve.
In the darkest valley of temptation
a quiet stranger
sighs,
dies.
Spirit me to forgiveness
beside rose waters,
beneath the light of grace,
behind gracious power;
restore me to hope
above buried heaven
near a hallowed presence
through days of mercy;
lead me to believe
that the worthy shall lead,
that a god shall comfort,
that tears for a mother and father
are tears of an angel,
that to walk above waters
is communion with earth
and that when life and light are done
I shall come
in from exile.
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