Litany by Rebecca Lindenberg
O you gods, you long-limbed animals, you
astride the sea and you unhammocked
in the cypress grove and you with your hair
full of horses, please. My thoughts have turned
from the savor of plums to the merits
of pity—touch and interrupt me,
chasten me with awe. Seed god and husk god,
god of the open palm, you know the doubts
that harrow me, you know my wrists are small.
O you, with glass-colored wind at your call,
and you, whose voice is soft as a turned page,
whose voice returns the air to its forms, send me
a word for faith that also means his thrum,
his coax, and her soft hollow—please, friend gods,
so when he says, You give it all away,
I can say, I am not sorry.
This poem comes from Rebecca Lindenberg’s book Love, an Index
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