Prayer to an empty heaven

[heslopian]

edit 1 - thanks to Mikeodial for the stanza break suggestions

Let love keep its distance.
Let me delight in the scent of clean laundry. On second reading, this could be seen as having a sexual connotation (clean sheets, not muddied with human spillage).
Let there be sheets to fold, trash to take out, This is a small thing, but "trash to take out" is something which, in my pop culture-addled brain, is associated with relationships and families ("it's your turn to take the trash out" etc.), which for me slightly works against your chastity theme.
coffee to make in the mornings, alarm clocks to set.

Let the evening sun wash my walls with gold, This is a bit cliché. I'd probably have started this verse with L3. JMO.
but let love keep its distance.
I will walk in parks on afternoons
which would otherwise be empty, I will walk Slight hint of solipsism here, which I like.
and watch the pigeons circling overhead.
There will be no room for eagles.
My life will be crowded with the quotidian, Hint of a lonely scholar here.
my life will pass apart from passion.
Not for me the sea-tangled curls of Ariadne,
the sacrifice of Alcestis, the wild rage of Achilles
with its infinity of regret. Good shift into mythology; furthers that earlier hint of the scholar.

Grant me instead
proper piety, and a yearning for a solitary bed. "Piety" is a Godly term, which makes me think that this poem is about religious chastity. Is it written from that perspective, or is it more of an atheistic fear of how wounding and possessive romantic love can be?
I will wander in the wide palm of some unnamed lake, This evokes a Jesus-walking-on-water image. Just an observation.
fishing with neither bait nor hook. Ditto, but with the "fishers of men".
Let there be a light wind.
Let the clouds be thin. Let there be nothing spectacular. Great line, rich with an austere un-sentimentality.

When evening falls I will sit in an unexceptional house
beside a casual fire, rocking in a rocking chair
that has no past attached to it. Ditto. Ditto this whole verse, in fact.
Let there be no full moons for me.

In spring and summer I will watch peonies open
in my garden, in the fall I will gather sweet peas
from the vine, and in winter watch the snow cover all sign
of my most mild efforts. Thus let the years go by, changing only
in the unchanging rotation of the seasons, changing only
in the slant of shadows from the trees. Let the trees grow tall. A Wordsworthian reverence for nature coupled with a Dickinsonian sense of solitude in this verse.

Let me never desire more than a clean bathtub and hot water to fill it.
Let me forget the long lament of loneliness.
Let love keep its distance. Excellent use of the refrain. It was a wise choice to hold it back for a while then let it finish the poem.

The poem feels a lot like a prayer (obviously) by a devout Catholic struggling with lustful thoughts. Only from the title do we get a sense of atheism. I mean that not as a criticism, just an observation. The images are wonderfully sharp and precise, elevating this above a lot of "list" poems (my term for those which revolve around a single premise and express it as a list of images or ideas). Thank you for the read