I am not yet born; O hear me. <br />Let not the bloodsucking bat or the rat or the stoat or the <br /> club-footed ghoul come near me. <br /> <br />I am not yet born, console me. <br />I fear that the human race may with tall walls wall me, <br /> with strong drugs dope me, with wise lies lure me, <br /> on black racks rack me, in blood-baths roll me. <br /> <br />I am not yet born; provide me <br />With water to dandle me, grass to grow for me, trees to talk <br /> to me, sky to sing to me, birds and a white light <br /> in the back of my mind to guide me. <br /> <br />I am not yet born; forgive me <br />For the sins that in me the world shall commit, my words <br /> when they speak me, my thoughts when they think me, <br /> my treason engendered by traitors beyond me, <br /> my life when they murder by means of my <br /> hands, my death when they live me. <br /> <br />I am not yet born; rehearse me <br />In the parts I must play and the cues I must take when <br /> old men lecture me, bureaucrats hector me, mountains <br /> frown at me, lovers laugh at me, the white <br /> waves call me to folly and the desert calls <br /> me to doom and the beggar refuses <br /> my gift and my children curse me. <br /> <br />I am not yet born; O hear me, <br />Let not the man who is beast or who thinks he is God <br /> come near me. <br /> <br />I am not yet born; O fill me <br />With strength against those who would freeze my <br /> humanity, would dragoon me into a lethal automaton, <br /> would make me a cog in a machine, a thing with <br /> one face, a thing, and against all those <br /> who would dissipate my entirety, would <br /> blow me like thistledown hither and <br /> thither or hither and thither <br /> like water held in the <br /> hands would spill me. <br /> <br />Let them not make me a stone and let them not spill me. <br />Otherwise kill me.<br /><br />Louis Macneice<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/prayer-before-birth/
