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Psalm as Frustration I Can Live With

by Nicholas Samaras*

;

I love the fierce wind outside my window

but know I would freeze in it.

I love the fierce wind from where I view it.

I love to wake and feel the presence of the Lord within.

I feel his presence only to lose it,

lose his presence only to feel it return.

I am seriousness which falls away from seriousness.

I control and lose control. I seize and lose my grasp,

don't see and glimpse again.

I ration the irrational. I dive into ecstasy

and love the Lord as long as I can bear,

as I love the fierce wind outside my window.

*Nicholas Samaras won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award for Hands of the Saddlemaker (Yale). His poems have appeared in the New Yorker, New York Times, Paris Review, Poetry, New Republic, and Kenyon Review. He is now working on a manuscript entitled “Psalms, Miktams, and Maskils,” as well as a memoir. He lives in West Nyack, New York.