Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Carol Ann Duffy: "Prayer"













Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer
utters itself. So, a woman will lift
her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.

Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth
enters our hearts, that small familiar pain;
then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth
in the distant Latin chanting of a train.

Pray for us now. Grade 1 piano scales
console the lodger looking out across
a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls
a child's name as though they named their loss.

Darkness outside. Inside, the radio's prayer—
Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.*
  

*[Curator's note: These last words are from the "Shipping Forecast," a BBC Radio broadcast of weather reports and forecasts for the seas around the British Isles. Rockall, Malin, Dogger and Finisterre are four "sea areas." My friend Mary O'Connor, a poet born in Ireland, tells me the "Shipping Forecast" is "often the last thing on BBC Radio between midnight and two."]



"Prayer" by Carol Ann Duffy, from Mean Time. © Anvil Press Poetry, 2004.

Photography credit: Detail from "Man watching people go by," by stefg74, Greece, 2010 (originally black and white).


2 comments :

  1. the Dogger, Rockall, Malin litany is also quoted by Seamus Heaney in his "Glanmore Sonnets" from Field Work -- sonnet 7, i think! maybe 8

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