Prayer to the Lord

Prayer to the Lord

by Rafael Arévalo Martínez, 
Guatemalan Poet (1884-1957)

Translated from the Spanish by Roberto Hope

It has been my luck, perhaps

to be a bough lit on fire

which is burned out to extinction

for its desire to see You.

The thing that smoulders, oh Lord

may perhaps be a thing that loves;

a flame, oh Lord mayhap be

nothing more than a pure love. 

It's the flame of this affliction

the one I feel that consumes me,

in which my verse is the fragrance

of a deep and hidden myrrh. 

And who knows whether the pain

is nothing more than the flame

which smoulders inside the bough

but one cannot see the glow.

And perhaps, oh Lord the fragrance

of candid madonna lily

may be nothing but the affliction

of the fire that consumes it, 

which goes so low and so deep, 

that we cannot feel the heat;

perhaps this world, oh my Lord, 

is nothing more than Your love. 

And perhaps we break away

from fires of the inner hearth

and the love with which we love

will afterwards join us back.

And perhaps are death and life

a process of the same love,

of a torch which has been lit

in the fire of our Lord.