Prayer 

published in the Thing in the Gap-Stone Stile

Alice Oswald, British born 1966, Oxford Professor of Poetry

 

 

Here I work in the hollow of God’s hand
with Time bent round into my reach. I touch
the circle of the earth, I throw and catch
the sun and moon by turns into my mind.
I sense the length of it from end to end,
I sway me gently in my flesh and each
point of the process changes as I watch;
the flowers come, the rain follows the wind.

 

 

 

 

 

And all I ask is this – and you can see
how far the soul, when it goes under flesh,
is not a soul, is small and creaturish –
that every day the sun comes silently
to set my hands to work and that the moon
turns and returns to meet me when it’s done.

 

 

 

Vintage North American dimity and doilies and Indian fabrics applied to damask table cloth material to make a quilt.