Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, PRAYER TO GO TO PARADISE WITH THE ASSES, by FRANCIS JAMMES


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

PRAYER TO GO TO PARADISE WITH THE ASSES, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: When I must make my way toward you, o lord
Last Line: Mirrors the brightness of eternal love.
Subject(s): Heaven; Jammes, Francis (1868-1938); Paradise


When I must make my way toward you, O Lord,
grant that it be a day when the countryside
is dusty with the fair. I wish, as here below,
to choose my way for going, as I please,
to Paradise, where stars shine in broad day.
I shall take my staff and set out on the highway,
and I shall call to the asses, who are my friends:
I am Francis Jammes and I'm going to Paradise,
for there is no hell in the land of the good Lord.
I shall say to them: Come, friends of the blue sky,
poor cherished beasts, who with a sudden flip of the ear
drive off the lean flies, and the blows, and the bees ...

May I appear unto You amid these beasts
whom I love so much because they lower the head
gently, and stand still locking their little feet
in a gentle fashion that stirs the pity in you.
I shall arrive followed by their thousands of ears
followed by those whose flanks bear shallow baskets
by those who draw the carts of mountebanks
or wagons of feather dusters and tin plates,
by those whose backs bear piles of dented cans,
by she-asses, gravid as a wolf-bitch, with broken pace,
by those on whom small pantaloons are put
because of the blue and sweating sores inflamed
by stubborn flies that group and swarm around.
Lord, let it be with the asses that I come to you.
Let angels in that peace conduct us toward
the bush-grown streams where cherries hang as sleek
as is the laughing flesh of tender maids,
and grant that, bending in this garden of souls
above your holy waters, I may be
like unto the asses, whose meek, sweet poverty
mirrors the brightness of eternal love.





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