Vox Populi
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Barbara Hamby: How to Pray
Falling down on your knees is the easy part, like drinking
a glass of cold water on a hot day, the parched straw
of your throat flooded, your knees hitting the ground,
a prizefighter in the final rounds. You’re bloody,
your bones like iron ties, hands trembling in the dust. What
do you do with your hands? Clasp them together
as if you’re keeping your heart between your palms,
like their namesakes in the desert oasis,
because that’s what you’re looking for now, a place
where you can rest. It has been a dry ride for months,
sand filling your mouth, crusting your half-blind eyes,
and you need to speak to someone—though who
you don’t really know. Pardon is on your mind. Perhaps
you could talk to your mother. You are fifteen
and think her life is over. You don’t say it, but you think it,
and she’s ten years younger than you are now,
her hair still dark. How do you thank her for waking up
each morning and taking on a day that would kill you
and not just one but thousands? How do you thank her
for the way she tossed words around and made them
spin and laugh and do cartwheels on the lawn?
And your father, he’s the one who loved poetry,
bought the book that opened your world to you
like someone cutting into a birthday cake the gods
have baked just for her. Do you talk to him about not caring
and teaching you that same cool touch?
And King James, how do you thank him for all the words
his scribes took from Wycliff and Tyndall, and Keats
for his odes, and Neruda for his. But this wasn’t meant to be a prayer
of thanksgiving but a scourge with a hairshirt and whips
and bowls of gruel. But is it blood the gods need,
or should your offering be all you have—words
and too many of them to count on the fingers pressed to your lips,
or maybe not enough and never the right ones.
From On the Street of Divine Love: New and Selected Poems (Pitt, 2014).
Barbara Hamby is the author of many collections of poetry. She and her husband David Kirby edited the poetry anthology Seriously Funny. She teaches at Florida State University where she is distinguished university scholar.
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It’s been pouring all day where I am now and instantly I am transported to the desert, a dry spell, where words for prayer and for much of life are “maybe not enough and never the right ones.” What a magnificent poem with just the right words.
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Thanks, Mandy. I love Barbara’s poems too.
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I love these reminders of how brilliant you are! Thanks.
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This poem hit home. It speaks about the unspreakable and so very private in a new way and opens a door to share ones innermost moments of gratitude and doubt, pain, joy, and helplessness. Thank you Barbara, thank you Michael.
“But is it blood the gods need,
or should your offering be all you have—words
and too many of them to count on the fingers pressed to your lips,
or maybe not enough and never the right ones.”
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It’s a constant wonder to me how poetry bridges distance with such precise feeling.
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I know what you mean.
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“And your father, he’s the one who loved poetry,
bought the book that opened your world to you
like someone cutting into a birthday cake the gods
have baked just for her.”
That simile made me gasp with pleasure! And the choice of pronoun is perfect. That “you” that isn’t anyone of us — yet, in its perfect tone, becomes universal and the poem lingers in us long after we finishing reading it. Well, this is how it is for me. Thank you Barbara, thank you Michael.
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Thank YOU, Laure-Anne. Your comments are always spot on.
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Thank you! How unexpected and how powerful!
“or should your offering be all you have…”
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I awoke this morning trembling with some unknown fear and somehow this poem connected it to something also unknown, but closer.
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Thanks, Barbara. You have people who love you.
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An ever-growing home, Michael!
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“What
do you do with your hands? Clasp them together
as if you’re keeping your heart between your palms,
like their namesakes in the desert oasis,”
I had to stop, read this twice, very beautiful, thank you Barbara Hamby, for lifting me up this morning.
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Thanks, Helen. I agree. Barbara is a wonderful poet!
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“But is it blood the gods need,
or should your offering be all you have—words…”
I also think to myself, that right now I don’t even have words – but I do have the poems of others, their words…
How this poem resonates, thank you Barbara, and Michael for posting.
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Thank YOU, Noelle, for being a daily reader of VP. It means a a great deal to me that the pieces I send out find a home in people’s hearts.
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Right now I don’t have words. Thank you for letting me know I’m not alone
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