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Louis MacNeice - Prayer Before Birth
Work rating: High

	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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