Prayer

O sea, despise me not with hints of spray
crying at sunrise for a foreign brightness
and bless my ship with homecoming today.

The iced wind of my strength is my decay.
The word salutes its metrical politeness.
O sea, despise me not with hints of spray.

Small, sickly rats that leap to greet me say
he needs to founder. Strew my mind with triteness
and bless my ship with homecoming today.

“I am too weak to recognise delay” –
odd shapes reflect a miracle of slightness.
O sea, despise me not with hints of spray!

Now hush the world its usual display
and wake one helmsman from his star of rightness
and bless my ship with homecoming today.

There is no sea, no home. Only I pray
a lilt of vanity, a kiss of lightness:
O sea, despise me not with hints of spray,
and bless my ship with homecoming today.

At college I used the villanelle form to learn to be a poet. It was by no means a case of poetry coming ‘as naturally as leaves to a tree’, as Keats advised; but while I may have worked too hard at it in a certain way at the time, my commitment to the cause was entire – at least, I hardly seemed to have a choice in the matter.