This is our dear friend John—generous, gorgeous, brilliant—who died this past winter in Oaxaca. This photo was taken in Far Rockaway, in the days after Hurricane Sandy (2012), where we were volunteering with the rebuilding. We found this sign in the rubble, and we held it up, not ironically, but to ask, sincerely, How can we pray for you today? Or maybe it was ironic, to find this sign, this prayer, broken in the rubble.
Today I lit a candle, placed this photograph of John beside it.
Robert Hass, in his book A Little Book on Form, offers that the form of a prayer often follows this structure: Praise, then ask. Our father who art in Heaven is followed by Give us this day our daily bread. The praise, Hass says, led to the litany, a list of praise, and this litany, this list, ends with a wish. But the litany could also become more of a complaint, a dirge, a list of what is wrong, of what is being asked to be lifted. This type of litany, according to Hass, transformed over time into the ode and the elegy.
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