Vox Populi
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Robert Cording: An Unasked for Inauguration Prayer, 2025
Lord of the light that reveals
how we have failed and failed again
the one requirement asked of us—
to love one another.
Lord of our freedom
and our freedom to abuse being free,
our never-ceasing need for endless rights
without ever recognizing,
as your prophet Weil has pleaded,
our inherent obligations to one another.
Lord who lives with us in the bloody mess
of history tattooed with the timeline
of our mistakes, who mourns
for what comes to pass and for what doesn’t.
Lord who resists our arrangements
of what we believe we know is right,
those idols we make and remake
of the darkest parts of ourselves, worshipping
what hurts us most, and fills us
with a restlessness that can never find its rest
in the getting and spending
that the prophet Wordsworth foretold,
of a world too much with us.
Lord of joy, not happiness,
Lord of the last shall be first, be with us
in this Hell until it becomes the Heaven it is,
if only we could stop
placing ourselves directly in the path
of what we should be.
~~~~
Copyright 2025 Robert Cording
Robert Cording is professor emeritus at College of the Holy Cross where he taught for 38 years and served as the Barrett Chair of English and Creative Writing. After his retirement, he worked for five years as a poetry mentor in the Seattle Pacific University low residency MFA program. His many books include Heavy Grace (Alice James, 2022) and In the Unwalled City (Slant, 2022).
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If only!
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Yes
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Poetry is the only way I can live with the pain over which I can exercise no power. Thank you, Robert Cording and (as always) Vox Populi.
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Thanks, Annie. Your voice is important here.
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I read this poem twice with complete trust — each time thinking yes, thank you, amen.
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Yes, thank you, amen.
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Bob, this prayer-poem brought tears to my eyes. Amen.
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Thank you
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Simone Weil wrote: The love of our neighbor in all its fullness simply means being able to say to him, “What are you going through?” I would add that we should then pay attention to their answer, whether implied or direct, examine our options, and then act as best we can. The command of Leviticus and the Christian testaments to love your neighbor as yourself, also comes into play here. The golden rule applied to others and our own well-being are a mutuality. If only this were easy.
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Yes, accepting the full humanity of other people is more challenging than it should be….
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