Thursday, November 06, 2003

CS Lewis on Prayer

Master, they say that when I seem
To be in speech with you,
Since you make no replies, it's all a dream
-One talker aping two.

They are half right, but not as they
Imagine; rather, I
Seek in myself the things I meant to say,
And lo! The wells are dry.

Then, seeing my empty, you forsake
The Listener's role, and through
My dead lips breathe and into utterance wake
The thoughts I never knew.

And thus you neither need reply
Nor can; thus, while we seem
Two talking, thou are One forever, and I
No dreamer, but thy dream.

(C.S. Lewis, 'Poems', Ed. Walter Hooper (New York: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, 1964), 122-123.)

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