Prayer

(Mark Rothko at the Beach by Joan Vienot - found here)

We who are nothingness can never be filled:

Never by orchards on the blowing sea,
Nor the rich foam of wheat all summer sunned.

Our hollow is deeper far than treasure can fill:
Helmets of gold swim ringing in the wells
Of our desire as thimbles in the sea.

Love cannot fill us either: children’s love,
Nor the white care of mothers, nor the sweet
Concern of sister nor the effort of friends;

No dream-caress nor actual: the mixed breath,
Lips that fumble in dark and dizzily cling
Till all nerves tighten to the key of love.

The feasted man turns empty eyes about;
The king builds higher on a crumbling base,
His human mouth a weapon; his brain, maps.

The lover awakes in horror: he gropes out
For the known form, and even enfolding, fears
A bed by war or failing blood undone.

For we who are nothingness can nothing hold.

Only solution: come to us, conceiver,
You who are all things, held and holder, come to us,
Come like an army marching the long day
And the next day and week and all that year;

Come like an ocean thundering to the moon,
Drowning the sunken reef, mounting the shore.
Come, infinite answer to our infinite want.

Her ancient crater only the sea can fill.

~John Frederick Nims