Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

John Frederick Nims’ "Prayer" is a meditation on human emptiness and the inexhaustible longing that defines existence. The poem presents a relentless depiction of desire and its insufficiency, culminating in a plea for transcendence. Nims structures the poem as a series of negations, demonstrating that neither material abundance, human love, nor power can satisfy the vast hollowness of the soul. In doing so, he crafts an extended metaphor in which the human condition is likened to an unfillable void, a hollow or crater that only something beyond the world’s grasp—an infinite answer—can fill.

The poem opens with an assertion of fundamental insufficiency: We who are nothingness can never be filled. The phrasing suggests not just a state of lacking, but an inherent condition of being. The subsequent lines introduce images of abundance—the orchards on the blowing sea, the rich foam of wheat all summer sunned—only to deny their fulfillment. The juxtaposition of plenitude and emptiness heightens the poem’s central paradox: the more the world offers, the more evident it becomes that nothing within it can satisfy.

This hunger extends beyond the material to the symbolic, as helmets of gold—a traditional emblem of conquest and wealth—are reduced to insignificance, swimming ringing in the wells of our desire as thimbles in the sea. The image of golden helmets, objects of war and dominion, contrasts with their helpless floating, as if power itself is weightless against the depth of human need. The metaphor suggests that even the most grandiose aspirations are futile in the face of existential yearning.

Nims continues this negation in the realm of human relationships, dismantling love’s promise of fulfillment. Children’s love, the white care of mothers, the sweet concern of sister, and the effort of friends—all fail to fill the void. The poem even negates erotic love, both its idealized form (dream-caress) and its physical reality (actual). The visceral description of lips that fumble in dark and dizzily cling / Till all nerves tighten to the key of love acknowledges the intensity of romantic passion, but its presence in a list of disappointments confirms that even the most intimate union is ultimately insufficient.

The poem’s middle section expands its critique to figures of status and authority. The feasted man, presumably one who has known luxury, remains unsatisfied, his empty eyes emphasizing how wealth and indulgence fail to sustain. The king, emblem of control, is caught in the illusion of stability, building higher on a crumbling base. This line, invoking images of doomed ambition, resonates with Shelley’s Ozymandias and other poetic warnings against the hubris of power. His human mouth a weapon; his brain, maps suggests not only his inclination toward war, but his transformation into a creature of cold calculation, divorced from the human warmth he might have once sought.

A shift occurs in the next lines, where the lover awakes in horror, reinforcing the poem’s argument that love, like all else, is impermanent. Even as he reaches out for the known form, the certainty of mortality intrudes: he fears a bed by war or failing blood undone. Love, then, is not only insufficient but fragile, haunted by loss before it can even be fully grasped. This moment encapsulates the essential tragedy of human desire—not only can we not be filled, but even what we hold will inevitably slip away.

From this stark assessment, the poem turns to its resolution. For we who are nothingness can nothing hold. The repetition of nothingness reinforces the argument, leading directly into the invocation that follows. Here, the poem takes on the direct address of a traditional prayer: Only solution: come to us, conceiver, / You who are all things, held and holder, come to us. The use of conceiver suggests a deity not only as creator but as a being who contains all things—something that, unlike the transient gifts of the world, can provide completeness. The imperative come to us repeats, increasing in urgency, transforming into an image of divine power: Come like an army marching the long day / and the next day and week and all that year. This imagery of relentless, advancing force contrasts with the previous depictions of futile longing. The divine presence, unlike human efforts, does not falter or wane.

The final simile shifts from the martial to the elemental: Come like an ocean thundering to the moon, / Drowning the sunken reef, mounting the shore. The ocean is immense, all-consuming, its movements dictated by the moon’s pull, suggesting an inevitable fulfillment. The phrase mounting the shore implies both an embrace and a conquest, as if the divine presence will finally overwhelm the insufficiency of human existence.

The poem concludes with the most definitive assertion of what is needed: Come, infinite answer to our infinite want. The repetition of infinite establishes the fundamental correspondence between human lack and divine fulfillment. The final image, Her ancient crater only the sea can fill, returns to the motif of emptiness, suggesting that just as the ocean is the only force capable of filling a crater, so too can only the divine answer the depths of human need.

Through its relentless negations and its soaring invocation, "Prayer" articulates a vision of humanity as profoundly incomplete, forever unsatisfied by worldly pleasures or relationships. The poem’s structure, moving from material insufficiency to spiritual longing, mirrors the traditional movement of a prayer from lamentation to supplication. Nims employs rich metaphor and evocative imagery to demonstrate that human experience is defined by absence—a nothingness that only something beyond the world can satisfy. Whether the poem’s conclusion suggests hope or desperation depends on the reader’s perspective: is the divine response assured, or is the infinite answer simply another name for the void? Either way, "Prayer" captures the essential yearning at the heart of existence, the hunger for something greater, the ache of desire that will not be stilled.

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