Psalm 6, Patrice de la Tour du Pin | translation by Jennifer Grotz

,

.

Then I came to dream of writing

the great prayer of our time . . .

This ambition plagues me constantly:

I could never have the right to such a voice.

I draw, of course, from the choir of voices in my soul,

voices that come to me through blood or friendship,

chance cries and similar calls for grace,

even echoes of those I’ve barely encountered.

I assemble an interior liturgy in this way,

by finding the great number who reside in me.

If my dream is laughable, Lord,

extinguish it, for it consumes me.

It guides me in what I seek:

could poetry be a kind of grace?

I hold on to this lovely hope

more tenacious at times than my demons.

But human thirst infiltrates it as well:

my most intimate liturgy would like to be the most intimate of all.

One must be able to hear the cry of others, to do nothing but

empty the self for the sake of a common call.

To hear in the voices of others your love cry and your lament:

so I go silent: you hold me.