Sky to Sing to Me

I've been reading Against Forgetting: Twentieth Century Poetry of Witness, edited by Carolyn Forché. It was a Christmas present, and I have been sticking little slips of white paper all through it; there are so many I'd like to return to. I'm sharing some excerpts of Prayer before Birth by Louis MacNeice.

This poem was inspired by living in London during the Blitz. I named this post after the line about the sky because it struck me as very poignant that, in a time when bombs were a perpetual threat, MacNeice imagined a gentle sky for children to come.

from Prayer before Birth
by Louis MacNeice

I am not yet born; provide me
With water to dandle me, grass to grow for me, trees to talk
  to me, sky to sing to me, birds and a white light
   in the back of my mind to guide me...

I am not yet born; O fill me
With strength against those who would freeze my
    humanity, would dragoon me into a lethal automaton,
      would make me a cog in a machine, a thing with
       one face, a thing, and against all those
          who would dissipate my entirety, would
            blow me like thistledown hither and
              thither or hither and thither
                like water held in the
                  hands would spill me.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Have a listen:


Laura at Writing the World For Kids is our Poetry Friday round-up host today.