Prayer before birth

Question 1

grass to grow for me, trees to talk

Answer 1

Personification of the trees and skies highlights the speaker’s feeling that true power and protection lies with nature, not the destructive, corrupting human race

Question 2

“I am not yet born; rehearse me

In the parts I must play and the cues I must take when

old men lecture me, bureaucrats hector me, mountains

    frown at me, lovers laugh at me, the white

Answer 2

Enjabment in this stanza to reflect the speaker’s panic and fear but also the erratic nature of life

Question 3

“Let them not make me a stone and let them not spill me.

Answer 3

The use of anaphora “let them not” emphasises the speaker’s fears of living a life that is full of threat and corruption

Question 4

would make me a cog in a machine, a thing with

           one face, a thing, and against all those

Answer 4

The use of the caesura isolates the phrase, suggesting that a person is reduced to a mere object without their humanity

Question 5

Stanza 3

Answer 5

In stanza three, the personification of nature mirrors the speaker’s desire to live a lif