Episode 27 “Prayer before Birth” read by Louis McNiece - poet from Belfast READING POETRY #NaPodPoMo

You hear Louis McNiece reading his poem aloud - and Paul O’Mahony reading it twice. 
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Prayer before Birth

By Louis MacNeice

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.
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