Listen to the world’s best poetry read out loud.

Mrs/Mother blessed art the windowpanes

O keep us from the lure of dust

forgive this hankering for distant lanes

give us brave archangels of morning sun

Mrs/Mother hail the dull bulb of scratched spoons

for we must lift the humility of soup

O deliver us from the sin of bread

excuse the rough palm its trespassing of skin

Mrs/Mother O let us learn the hollow curse of curdled pans

the evil celibacy of the washing up

the everlasting weight of a dowager’s hump

lead us not into the drowning of knives

Mrs/Mother O pity thy uncovered fruit

pray for the sake of one small brown bruise

for the baptism of potatoes for the hour

of their laying bare the mining of sprouted eyes

Mrs/Mother O speak as one who stoops to crumbs

glory! for the cumber of a used womb

have mercy upon the quiet chapel of upturned cups

suffer the the bowl’s foam the smell of grass

Mrs/Mother O rise before such nights of bleak glass

light without end and light and light and light!

and forever there shall be the sight of birds

invisible tastes of water amen