april 23 {the poem project}

23.

Psalm
Make us, O Lord, a people fit for poetry,
And grant us clear voices to praise all noble achievement.
Make our guardians wiser than their fathers before them
Who sought the name below the easy jingle
And starved the poets without a name.
Give us fresh eyes to see Thy earth anew,
To see the animal and the grass and the water
As the first man saw them in the dawn.
Grant us, O Lord, Thy benediction
When we are restless and groping in the shadows,
And lead us to the shining mountains.
Make us worthy of the golden chorus
That the sons of God have always yearned to sing.
Make us, O Lord, a people fit for poetry.
Idris Davies

Idris Davies is another Welsh poet I discovered in, er, Wales. He isn’t much read nowadays, but his long poem The Angry Summer is an amazing achievement. He refers, of course, to the Welsh in this poem, but I think it’s a fair psalm for anyone.