Wednesday, May 15, 2013

prayer after eating




Prayer After Eating 
by Wendell Berry  
I have taken in the light
that quickened eye and leaf.
May my brain be bright with praise
of what I eat, in the brief blaze
of motion and of thought.
May I be worthy of my meat.


2 comments:

  1. you've entered a new place,
    or you have entered the same place
    through a new door.

    i want to come too.

    i want to stay.

    i've brought this poem before to our world and i bring it again. i crave a paradigm shift and am saddened to believe that in order for the full shift the human (might) must be absent and so i crave the smaller shift that might (must) happen inside of me.

    Our Daily Bread

    Breakfast is drunk down … Damp earth
    of the cemetery gives off the fragrance of the precious blood.
    City of winter … the mordant crusade
    of a cart that seems to pull behind it
    an emotion of fasting that cannot get free!
    I wish I could beat on all the doors,
    and ask for somebody; and then
    look at the poor, and, while they wept softly,
    give bits of fresh bread to them.
    And plunder the rich of their vineyards
    with those two blessed hands
    which blasted the nails with one blow of light,
    and flew away from the Cross!
    Eyelash of morning, you cannot lift yourselves!
    Give us our daily bread,
    Lord … !
    Every bone in me belongs to others;
    and maybe I robbed them.
    I came to take something for myself that maybe
    was meant for some other man;
    and I start thinking that, if I had not been born,
    another poor man could have drunk this coffee.
    I feel like a dirty thief … Where will I end?
    And in this frigid hour, when the earth
    has the odor of human dust and is so sad,
    I wish I could beat on all the doors
    and beg pardon from someone,
    and make bits of fresh bread for him
    here, in the oven of my heart … !

    by Cesar Vallejo
    Translated by James Wright

    xo
    erin

    ReplyDelete
  2. And to have sat at that table...may I be worthy again!

    ReplyDelete

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