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.
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you've entered a new place,
ReplyDeleteor 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
And to have sat at that table...may I be worthy again!
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