Morning Prayer with Rat King
by Kaveh Akbar
published in Poetry, March 2018
gravity accounts for the distance between weight
and mass it can also mean alarming importance human
bones are so full of gravity it’s hard for us to
swim I lost my glasses chasing a branch in the ocean
which is far too deep to dredge sometimes
I imagine the sea’s made of actual
tears this would explain the salt think of all
the disconsolate toddlers weeping right now into
the earth the tears must go somewhere it’s important
to consider everything to name what we’re able oceans
give us rain but we don’t call rain ocean knot a dozen
rats together by the tail and you’ve got a roi de rats
which is harder than rain to hear in the night and
far less welcome who mourns a rat king
frustrated chthonic always the biter never the bitten
they give us the evil we need to stay moored to
good still I would break any promise to avoid finding
one O Terrible God of the Mechanical Age I am
your favorite pilgrim yet even I am finding it impossible
to speak to you now without asking for protection
