A Prayer to Light, and: Envy

A Prayer to Light, and: Envy Kwame Dawes (bio) A Prayer to Light It has been eight years,and I've yet to learnthe dialect of this land,though I know nowthe texture of snow,the fine drift, the water-thickflakes, the dart and dizzyof ice caught in the deepfreeze, this is earth. What I can't speakis the language of birds,and my eyes,growing dimmer each year,have given upon following the dartand leap of the birds. I do not know their names;I will leave these winter dayswith a grand illiteracy. Still, I have allowed the quarrelof moving birds to comfort me,and on bright mornings,I see a single bird, brown End Page 79 and tipped in red, standingstill as ice on the porch railing. There is something calmingin this, a prayer to light. End Page 80 Envy My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. —1 cor 4:4 i. He stands before the mountainand confesses, "I do not knowthe woman I love. I know her lessthan I ever did; and I knowthat there was a time when she wantedto be known. But now she is contentto offer me only the bland and inscrutableface of a landscape that punishesneglect and betrayal; that turns itsbeauty into a wall of brutal silence.How does she do this? She saysit is over, and I am left bereft,restless, while she sleeps the longsleep of peace and satisfaction." ii. The things he envies: Item:landscapes stubbornly dramaticas all things brought to beautiful boilby the natural upheavals of the world.Item: the ability to wake each morningto mist and churning foam, and the scentof sulfur in the air. Item: those likeher who can collapse into their catastrophes, End Page 81 turning the world into spectators,appalling all into pity for their painand gratitude for their genius. iii. He envies, too, the idea of an islandwith its mountains of sheltering green,the anomie of the messy history of place:the markers of ownership and the markersof the dead. He envies the scentof the fecund earth thick with his people'sblood. Above all, he envies that womanher capacity to close the door on love,to sleep soundly as an escape,to turn even his tender reaching handinto a monstrosity. End Page 82 Kwame Dawes kwame dawes** is the author of thirty-five books of poetry as well as other books of fiction and essays. Dawes was named the Poet Laureate of Jamaica in 2024. Copyright © 2024 Yale University