"Forgive Us As Well": A Prayer from the Depth of Breakdown - Claude.ai
There are prayers born in silence and light. And there are others — born in dust, in strain, almost without hope. Tatiana Voltskaya's poem is one of the latter. This is not the prayer of a righteous person. It is the prayer of someone who knows the truth about themselves — and yet still prays.
The Paradox of Self-Accusation as an Act of Honesty
The first thing that strikes you about this text is its merciless honesty with oneself. The lyrical subject does not separate themselves from "the grim, the angry, the crafty bastards, the red-faced." They say we. They include themselves among those who cut down the oak groves, who shout "we can do it again," who cried "Hosanna!" and then later — "Crucify him!"
This is a rare spiritual movement. Psychologically, it is much simpler to pray for oneself, contrasting oneself with the evil around. "Lord, save me from them." But here it is different: "save us, and I am a part of this us." This isn't self-flagellation in a neurotic sense, not masochism. It is sobriety. The very kind the Church Fathers spoke of: genuine repentance begins the moment a person stops considering themselves an exception.
In psychology, there is a concept — the collective shadow. Jung described how peoples and cultures repress into the unconscious what is unbearable to acknowledge about themselves. Voltskaya's poem is an attempt not to repress. To look directly at the shadow and still ask for love.
"They Knew Not What They Did"
The central theological axis of the text is a reference to Christ's words from the Cross: "forgive them, for they know not what they do." The poet takes this phrase as the foundation for the plea: if You forgave those, then forgive us as well, because we also did not know.
Here lies the psychological accuracy of this "we did not know." It is not an excuse in the sense of absolving responsibility. It is a description of a particular state of spiritual blindness, in which a person commits evil — and sincerely does not understand what they are doing. They think they are defending, avenging the truth, repeating a heroic feat. They feel righteous. And this, paradoxically, makes their situation more tragic, not less.
Dostoevsky knew this abyss. His characters are almost never villains in their own eyes. They are sufferers, avengers, idealists. That is precisely why they so need forgiveness — not for conscious sin, but for the blindness that is more terrible than conscious sin.
Irony as a Shield and as a Wound
The poem is written with a painful irony. "Crafty bastards," "special forces," "we can do it again" — this is the language of contemporary Russian reality, deliberately crude, vulgar. And this crudeness is not the author's cynicism. It is an attempt to speak with God in the language of the reality that is, not the one one might wish for.
This is an important spiritual-psychological gesture: not to embellish prayer, not to drape ecclesiastical vestments over what actually looks different. To say: this is what we are like. Distorted. Grown crueler from the chills. With stumps instead of oak groves. And still — we look to the sky.
Here, irony serves as a protective layer over unbearable pain. Behind the "shining special forces" lies a completely serious expectation of a miracle — and an almost certain conviction that the miracle will not come. This is what, in the spiritual tradition, is called the dark night of the soul: to continue turning to God, feeling no response, almost not believing in it — and yet still turning.
Compassion as the Name of God
"Have pity on us, Lord" — is not a plea for victory, not a request for success or health. It is a plea for pity. To be seen in one's weakness — and not rejected.
Psychologically, this is a request for unconditional acceptance. The very one a person first experiences — or fails to experience — in their relationship with their mother. When a child is bad, when they have gotten dirty, screamed, broken something — does someone love me anyway? An adult can carry this question their entire life. And direct it — toward heaven.
"Whisper 'I love you'" — this is not a request for thunder and lightning, not for signs. It is a request for a whisper. For the still small voice that Elijah heard after the storm and fire. The poem intuitively taps into biblical topography: God appears not in power, but in silence. And it is precisely this quiet "I love you" that is so lacking for people grown wild with embitterment.
Gazing at the Sky
The final image — people looking at the sky in clouds of dust. An image simultaneously comic and tragic. They await the "shining special forces" — and in this very phrasing, one hears bitterness: this is what the waiting for God has come to, to military jargon, to the image of a heavenly airborne assault.
But behind the irony lies something real. They are still looking upward. In dust, in strain, in anger — but they are looking. And this, perhaps, is the last thing that remains of faith when everything else is destroyed: simply not to lower one's eyes.
Simone Weil wrote that the very expectation of God is already a form of God's presence. That a gaze turned toward Him is already an encounter. If so — then the people in this poem, without knowing it themselves, are already praying. Already receiving what they ask for.
Tatiana Voltskaya's poem is a document of an era and a document of a soul. It speaks of what prayer looks like when a person cannot pretend to be better than they are. When they lack the strength for pious words — but have the strength for honesty. And, perhaps, it is precisely such a prayer — tattered, sarcastic, ashamed of itself — that reaches further than a beautiful one.
Because it is real.
Have mercy on us, Lord, have mercy, we plead,
Don't leave us with thieves and those who condemn,
To drag out our years, hunching shoulders, and then
Grow crueler still from the chill and the need.
Have mercy on us, just whisper "I love,"
To the grim and the angry, sly-faced and red,
To those twisted by spite, who drunkenly said
"We can do it all over again!"—and drank thereof.
We will leave but bare stumps of the groves that You gave,
And from the air—nothing but strain, screech, and moan:
Such were we who cried "Hosanna!"—then, prone,
Began roaring for You to be crucified—"Rave!
Crucify Him!" But You pardoned them—so pardon us too,
For we also knew nothing of what we came to do.
So we gaze at the sky through the dust's swirling haze—
Is Your blazing Host coming down, in these days?
2020 Tatiana Voltskaya
