In a fifth-century treatise on prayer, John Cassian instructs his monastic brothers to chant the psalms “not as though they had been composed by the prophet [David], but as if [the monk] himself had written them, as if [the psalm] were his own private prayer uttered amid the deepest compunction of heart…Seized of the identical feelings in which the psalm was composed or sung we become, as it were, its author. We anticipate its idea instead of following it. We have a sense of it even before we make out the meaning of the words.” These monks are being told to engage with the psalms so intimately that the act of reading starts to feel like the experience of writing.

Psalm 6 is the first of seven psalms in particular—sometimes called the Penitential Psalms—traditionally used by supplicants suffering the absence of God. It’s said Augustine had them pinned above his bed in the final months of his life.

We’re not Cassian’s monks. We don’t recite the psalms every day, and we feel like novices participating for the first time in the long tradition of psalm translation from the Latin Vulgate into English. But it’s because of this discomfort that we’re translating the penitentials: they make you ask for help, and that’s the only real place prayer can come from. “Rebuke me not, Lord.” We write these psalms to say what everyone’s already said: Help. This is what I’ve got.

—Sam Bailey, Emma De Lisle, Talin Tahajian

PSALM 6
By Sam Bailey

Into the end.
Into a lot of songs.
For the octave.
A Psalm for David:

Lord, please don’t argue

in Your fury, and don’t, in Your craziness,

light me up. Feel sorry for me, Lord. I am

infirm. Cure me, reset

me, Lord, my bones have been all confused.

And my breath’s been a turbulence.

But You, Lord, how long?

Come back, Lord, come for my breath. Make me

saved according to Your sorriness because the person who remembers You

isn’t in death. In hell,

who will tell You anything?

I’ve labored inside this cloud of my groaning.

I’ll scrub my bed every finger-counted night, I will rigabo

––that means “I will cry”––on my horse

blanket with lacrima, English eyeball water. My pupils get disturbed

by fury. I’ve gotten old among all my enemies.

Scatter from me

everyone of you who labor unfairly because the Lord

has heard, from far away, our hamster noises.

The Lord hears from far away

poems. The Lord takes my prayer.

All my enemies turn back and blush with a red velocity.

They blush and their skulls go bankrupt.

PSALM 6
By Emma De Lisle

But don’t strike me, Lord, you don’t really have to.

I hear you.

You’re the one who corrects me.

You’re loud about it, only sometimes.

I feel that, I feel your displeasure like blood in me.

That’s mercy, you say, and I ask you for it, I shake, only sometimes.

If I’m well some of the time would you heal me anyway.

Aren’t my bones shaking, did you see that?

Lord how much longer til you shake me yourself?

You know if I’m dead I can’t ask you that anymore.

I won’t ask, I’ll be in the tomb.

Not the tomb I want I look for, O you are not in it.

Yes, I am sick of how I talk, how I cry, all it does is water the couch, this couch like half a couch which is limp, and green.

These limp pillows I throw around here, they wet through quick.

Weeping.

It’s not singing, but here we are.

O grief is that you in mine eye?

I grow old.

So do my enemies.

And they sorrow with me.

Get away from me, I don’t want my sorrow.

I want the Lord, who has heard me.

Now me and my enemies blush, it’s sudden, and we’re nervous about it.

But I tell them he heard when I asked the first time.

I tell you he lets me say it wrong.

But he lets me say it again.

PSALM 6
By Talin Tahajian

At the consecrated boundary, in lines, a psalm of David, for the octave

Lord don’t disagree. Lord don’t encase me in your spherical fever.

Have mercy on me Lord for I am weak. Make me sane Lord my bones are rolling in their casings.

And my soul is lost in an eddy of blood. But you God. How long.

Turn God and catch my spiraling soul. Make me sound because you are the one who suffers with me.

For it’s not death I’ll remember. This is Hell. Who can confess you.

I will labor ceaseless hollow-sounding. I will weep through the irregular night. Every night I will lie down

on my mattress and weep. My tears will soak through my mattress.

A wide-eyed frenzy wracks my eye-strings. I grow old amongst my foes.

Get away from me all you devotees to evil turf. For the Lord concedes to my wailing.

From this cave far away I know the Lord hears my begging. Please Lord receive my asking.

They blush and are disquieted all my enemies. I say ᴛᴜʀɴ and they turn and blush deeply swiftly.