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James K. Baxter Complete Prose Volume 2

A Poet’s True Prayer

page 127

A Poet’s True Prayer

A poet’s true prayer is when he looks in the mirror and crosses himself, saying – Lord, bless me and my double – your creation, and the illusion I need so much in order to think that creation has no limits. Lord, multiply my illusions; shut the mouths of moralists and make me fruitful. Lead me by no road that was ever built, and at the hour of my death be to me what I have told others You are – the Kind One, the Overlooker, the Everlasting Defence Lawyer!

In human terms, reality is almost entirely unknown. This presents a metaphysical difficulty, a boulder around which two roads may be taken – the road of the social scientist who collates fragments of knowledge and erects a system for them, as hygienic and exact as possible – or the road of the artist, who includes his own ignorance as a part of the structure he makes. Thus Dylan Thomas has written

But dark is a long way.
In the earth of the night alone
With all the living fury . . .

The poem affirms not only the reality of what is known, but also the reality of the one who knows and is also ignorant. Thus the poem implies by inference all that is not known. Knowledge of ignorance may be the most valuable knowledge to which an artist has access; when it is most powerful in his heart the work may achieve the resonance of a fist thundering on a locked door, and the mortal, who have secretly done the same, listen with terror, hope and recognition.

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