Poem - “Prayer”

By Christian Wiman

For all
the pain

passed down
the genes

or latent
in the very grain

of being;
for the lordless

mornings,
the smear

of spirit
words intuit

and inter;
for all

the nightfall
neverness

inking
into me

even now,
my prayer

is that a mind
blurred

by anxiety
or despair

might find
here

a trace
of peace.

Christian Wiman, who teaches at Yale Divinity School and Yale Institute of Sacred Music, is the author of Survival is a Style (FSG, 2020), Hammer is the Prayer: Selected Poems (FSG, 2016), My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer (FSG, 2013), and other books.

Christian Wiman, “Prayer” from Once in the West, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Copyright © 2014 by Christian Wiman. Reprinted with the permission of the poet.