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