My prayers have been answered, if they were prayers. I live. <br />I'm alive, and even in rather good health, I believe. <br />If I'd quit smoking I might live to be a hundred. <br />Truly this is astonishing, after the poverty and pain, <br />The suffering. Who would have thought that petty <br />Endurance could achieve so much? <br /> And prayers -- <br />Were they prayers? Always I was adamant <br />In my irreligion, and had good reason to be. <br />Yet prayer is not, I see in old age now, <br />A matter of doctrine or discipline, but rather <br />A movement of the natural human mind <br />Bereft of its place among the animals, the other <br />Animals. I prayed. Then on paper I wrote <br />Some of the words I said, which are these poems. <br /> <br /> <br />Anonymous Submission<br /><br />Hayden Carruth<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/at-seventy-five-rereading-an-old-book/
