The Manhattan Review
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The Manhattan Review
Established 1980
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Archive > Vol. 8 no. 2

 

D. Nurkse

A Prayer of Abandonment

 

Pain has been very patient with me,
teaching something of terrible importance.
Night after night I still don’t understand—
is it a word or a gesture?

I am a slow student
at wit’s end with myself.
If the test were tonight
all I could recite
would be: Clock, Mirror,
Curtain, Vase, Darkness.

I have not even mastered
the steps receding in the hall.