Prayer
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, 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, teaches at Yale Divinity School and Yale Institute of Sacred Music.
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.