A PRAYER FOR MARILYN MONROE

LORD,
receive this young woman known all over the world by the name of Marilyn Monroe
although this was not her real name
(but you know her real name, orphan raped at the age of nine.
and the shop girl who at 16 wanted to kill herself)
and who now appears before You without and makeup
without her press agent
without photographers and without her autograph
alone like an astronaut facing the spacial night.

When she was a little girl she dreamed she was naked in a church
            (according to Time)
in front of a kneeling multitude, whose heads were on the ground
and she had to walk on tiptoe so as not to step on the heads.
You understand our dreams even better than the psychiatrists.
A church, a house, a cave, stand for the shelter of the mother's
           breast
but also something more than that...
The heads, of course, are her admirers
(the mass of heads in darkness under the stream of light).
But the temple is not the studios of 20th Century Fox.
The temple--of gold and marble--is the temple of her body
where the Son of Man stands with a whip in his hand
driving away the businessmen of 20th Century Fox
who made Your house of prayer into a cave of thieves.

Lord
in this world corrupted by sin and radioactivity
You will not blame such a lonely shop girl.
Who like every shop girl dreamed of being a movie star.
And her dream came true (but like a technicolor truth)
She did nothing more than act out the script we told her to
--the script of our own lives--and the script was absurd.
Forgive her,Lord and forgive us
for out 20th Century
for this Colossal Super-Production on which we've all been working.
She was hungry for love and we gave her tranquillizers.
Because of the sad fact there are no saints
                                              she was offered Psychoanalysis.

Remember, Lord, her growing dread of the camera
and her hatred of makeup--the need to be made up for every scene--
and how her horror was growing
and her lateness arriving at the studios.

Like every shop girl
she dreamed of being a movie star.
And her life was unreal like a dream a psychiatrist interprets
          and flies away

Romance for her was a kiss with her eyes closed
and when she opens her eyes
she finds herself under klieg lights
and the lights go out !
and they take down the two walls of the room(it was a movie set)
while the Director walks off with his notebook
                                       because the scene has now been shot.
Or like a cruise on a yacht, a kiss in Singapore, a dance in Rio
the reception at the mansion of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor
          seen in the little living room of the miserable apartment.

The movie ended without the final kiss.
They found her dead in her bed with her hand on the telephone.
And the detectives didn't know who she was trying to call.

She was
like someone who's dialed the number of the only friendly voice
only to hear the voice of a record saying: the number you have dialed
           has been disconnected

Lord
whoever it was she was trying to call
and wasn't able to reach (and perhaps it was no one
or Someone whose number is not listed in the phone book of Los
        Angeles)
                                              You answer the phone!

by Ernesto Cardenal
                                                                  Translated by Stephen Kessler