POETRY: Our Father by James Schuyler

This morning view
is very plain: thou art
in Heaven: modern
brick, plate glass, unhallowèd,
as yet, by time,
yet Thy Name
blesses all: silver tanks
of propane gas, the sky,
Thy will,
is lucent blue, French
gray and cream,
is done: the night
on earth
no longer needs
the one white street globe light
as the light, it is
in Heaven.
Give us this day
—and a Friday
13th, August ’71,
at that:
our daily bread
and breakfast
(Product 19,
an egg, perchance: the hen-fruit,
food and symbol)
and forgive us our
trespasses
too numerous
to name as we
forgive our debtors: “pay
me ;when you can:
I don’t take
interest”
how green
the grass! so many
flowering weeds
Your free
will has freely
let us name: dandy-
lion (pisse-en-lit)
and, clover
(O Trinity)
it is
a temptation
to list them all,
all I know, that is:
the temptation
to show off—to
make a show
of knowing more,
than, in fact, I
know, is very real:
as real as a twelve-
pane window sash
one pane slivered
by a crack, a flash,
a mountain line
that stays
to praise
Thee,
Your Name and Your
creation
let me surrender
ever—
poets do: it
is their way
and deliver me
from evil
and the Three
Illusions
of the Will—
for the power
that flows electrically
in me is thine
O glorious central,
O plant,
O dynamo!
and the glory
of this cool a.m.
now
all
silver, blue
and white.