1
We gather to pray, passing invocations
around the cramped room, voice after voice
asking for mercy. Today, though, the ritual
atheist silence after the sixth
is broken by his voice,
baritone and tattered
at the edges. He prays
and grows small enough
to believe that a prayer
will turn things around;
small enough, to return, prodigal,
to the quiet chapel on the hill
above his home in Sturge Town,
where sturdier faith thrived
in his proud ancestry.
2
He prays and the ordinary dwarfs him.
This man shrinks, losing the quixotic
aura of dreams: A cottage, a lovely cottage in Oxford, my children around me, my poems, my son healed, cricket every Snday on the green. And help us to be a family, help us… In my weakness, in my splendid weakness.
3
We say Amen, collect our plates and eat.Everything tastes like dust.