'Prayer', by Carol Ann Duffy
May. 11th, 2003 07:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
altarielPrayer
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.
-- Carol Ann Duffy
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no subject
Date: 2003-05-11 03:10 pm (UTC)What is it about the Shipping Forecast that inspires poetry?
no subject
Date: 2003-05-11 03:14 pm (UTC)The words are beautiful, and you hear them in the middle of the night.
no subject
Date: 2003-05-12 12:55 am (UTC)Now feeling the urge to check if those three white leopards are still under the juniper tree.
And to watch a certain episode of Black Books again.
Katlinel
Re:
Date: 2003-05-13 03:51 am (UTC)Which 'Black Books'? (I've only seen the first season, is it a later one?)
no subject
Date: 2003-05-13 05:50 am (UTC)The Black Books ep is the one with the new security system and
where Fran's ex, Howard, has got a job reading the shipping forecast.
She takes her phone off the hook to listen (and other things).
Katlinel
Re:
Date: 2003-05-14 08:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-05-12 02:09 am (UTC)