Prayer

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 art One forever, and I

No dreamer, but Thy dream.

C.S. Lewis, Poems, 1964, pp. 122-3