A Usual Prayer

According to Thy will: That this day only
I may avoid the vile
and baritone away in a broader chorus
of to each other decent forebearance & even aid.

Merely sensational let's have today,
lacking mostly thinking, —
men's thinking being eighteen-tenths deluded.
Did I get this figure out of St Isaac of Syria?

For fun: find me among my self-indulgent artbooks
a new drawing by Ingres!
For discipline, two self-denying minus-strokes
and my wonted isometrics, barbells, & antiphons.

Lord of happenings, & little things,
muster me westward fitter to my end —
which has got to be Your strange end for me —
and toughen me effective to the tribes en route.

~ John Berryman ~