Prayers of Steel

B₂ – F#₄

Prayers of Steel was written in the fall of 1998 at the MacDowell Colony. Sandburg’s strong, sinuous, athletic poetry inspired a vocal line which is agile, with an edge, and at the same time conveys a great deal of warmth, and, at the end, transcendence.

PRAYERS OF STEEL

Lay me on an anvil, O God.
Beat me and hammer me into a crowbar.
Let me pry loose old walls.
Let me lift and loosen old foundations.

Lay me on an anvil, O God.
Beat me and hammer me into a steel spike.
Drive me into the girders that hold a skyscraper together.
Take red-hot rivets and fasten me into the central girders.
Let me be the great nail holding a skyscraper through blue
     nights into white stars.

Carl Sandburg's muscular poem that uses construction imagery as metaphor for the work of the soul - "Lay me on an anvil, O God./Beat and hammer me into a crowbar" to loosen old walls and foundations, "into a steel spike" that holds girders together; "Let me be the great nail holding a skyscraper through blue nights into white stars" - is given complementary musical treatment. The song is dynamically forceful until the final poetic line, which is set more softly as the vocal line soars to a quietly sustained E4 and F#4 at the end.