Speak

The poem, which is in the form of a prayer or apostrophic address, expresses the speaker’s longing for an explanation of why life seems not to have gone well for him. The directness of the appeal to God is most apparent in the first and last stanzas. In the first stanza, the speaker states that he has been searching for “you” (Line 4)—he means God but does not yet say so—for a long time and in every way he can think of, but without any success. Now the search is at an end and he is wondering what to do, since it seems that the cause is hopeless. The image at the end of the stanza, of a streetlight spinning above the speaker, which in his spiritual blindness he is unable to see, suggests that there will be no relief for him.

The speaker’s use of the apostrophe “Lord” in three of the remaining four stanzas clarifies whom he is addressing, and the form of the prayer becomes more fully apparent in the last stanza, which in its earnestness approaches traditional religious language. As the speaker makes a final plea to God, he tries to put his own life in the best possible light: Having learned the lessons of Jesus Christ, the speaker has shown compassion to the unfortunate and has loved God’s creation.