Prayer Before Birth first appeared in print in 1944, the first poem in MacNeice's volume Springboard. This poem, Prayer Before Birth, written during the terror struck days of World War II, places the realities of an evil world into the mouth of a baby not even quite born. Prayer Before Birth takes the reader into the womb of an anonymous mother, where a soon to be born baby expresses fear for its own future in a world potentially full of horror and danger. This baby cries out for protection against evil. The tactic of speaking through a baby allows the readers to see the juxtaposition of evil and innocence. The speaker is the unborn child inside the mother's womb, thinking of the future as it is about to be born. This unusual perspective gives the poem a highly charged aura which intensifies as the stanzas progress. Of course, it quickly becomes clear that the baby has a knowledge of one who has already lived. Therefore, Prayer Before Birth reads as a prayer that an old man wished he could have prayed as a newborn, before the world got a hold of him with all of the evil therein.
#Poem #PrayerBeforeBirth by #LouisMacNeice
I am not yet born; O hear me.
Let not the bloodsucking bat or the rat or the stoat or the
club-footed ghoul come near me.
I am not yet born, console me.
I fear that the human race may with tall walls wall me,
with strong drugs dope me, with wise lies lure me,
on black racks rack me, in blood-baths roll me.
I am not yet born; provide me
With water to dandle me, grass to grow for me, trees to talk
to me, sky to sing to me, birds and a white light
in the back of my mind to guide me.
I am not yet born; forgive me
For the sins that in me the world shall commit, my words
when they speak to me, my thoughts when they think me,
my treason engendered by traitors beyond me,
my life when they murder by means of my
hands, my death when they live me.
I am not yet born; rehearse me
In the parts I must play and the cues I must take when
old men lecture me, bureaucrats hector me, mountains
frown at me, lovers laugh at me, the white
waves call me to folly and the desert calls
me to doom and the beggar refuses
my gift and my children curse me.
I am not yet born; O hear me,
Let not the man who is beast or who thinks he is God
come near me.
I am not yet born; O fill me
With strength against those who would freeze my
humanity, would dragoon me into a lethal automaton,
would make me a cog in a machine, a thing with
one face, a thing, and against all those
who would dissipate my entirety, would
blow me like thistledown hither and
thither or hither and thither
like water held in the
hands would spill me.
Let them not make me a stone and let them not spill me.
Otherwise kill me.
Video editor: Kaushal Desai
Poem recitation: Kaushal Desai