INVOCATION

I pray thee, Lord; to me impart within my breast a conscious heart: Give me the vision to divine the rapture pulsing through the wine.

It never pleased me, to receive another’s breath that I might live: Give me a breath as light as morn, a sigh that in the home was born.

I am a torrent: do not set me dribbling in a rivulet, but give my waters space to spill o’er valley broad and spreading hill.

Is it thy will to fashion me a rival to the boundless sea, amid the tumult of the main grant me the pearl’s repose to gain.

Thou had’st the falcon that I am follow the leopard for his game: Give me high will, a sharper claw, to win my victim to my maw.

The small fowl of the Sanctuary I marked my precious prey to be: Grant me an arrow that, unsped, unerring flies, and strikes them dead.

Illuminate my lifeless clay with anthems David used to play; let all my atoms swiftly spring upborne upon an ember’s wing.