"Prayer," by Carol Ann Duffy

First, a few notes:

(1) “Minims” are half-notes written on a page of musical notation.

(2) BBC Radio has long broadcast the "Shipping Forecast” for the various seas around the British Isles, waters divided into 31 sea areas, including Rockall, Malin, Dogger, and Finisterre. These regular broadcasts, especially the ones late at night, are for many Britons a deeply familiar touchstone: the announcer’s voice methodically reciting the sea areas all around the islands, one by one, forecasting the weather.

(3) And finally, “Finisterre” (pronounced “FIN-iss-tair,” rhymes with “BIN-kiss-fair”) literally means “end of the world”; the sea area’s name was recently changed to “FitztRoy,” but many Britons (such as the poet Duffy herself) grew up hearing the older name “Finisterre” repeatedly intoned on BBC Radio…

“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.

+ Carol Ann Duffy

In this extraordinary sonnet, Duffy evokes a world saturated with prayers: voluntary and involuntary, spoken and sung, resounding and silent. Prayers that “utter themselves.” Birds singing in a tree, for instance — or is it the tree itself who sings? The distant, regular rhythms of a train — now become a memory of childhood, the distant, regular rhythms of chanting in Latin. The simple, halting repetition of a child playing piano scales — now become a source of consolation. The familiar sound at dusk of a parent calling a child into the house — now become an echo of vulnerability, of what it’s like to lose a child.

“Pray for us now,” Duffy writes, evoking the “Hail Mary” (“pray for us now and at the hour of our death”). Life and death interweave in this great symphony of prayer, safety and peril, comfort and sorrow. Darkness outside — and inside, at home late at night, even the radio prays: a familiar voice names the surrounding seas, one by one, trying as we might to forecast what’s coming.

And at last, in this modern take on an Elizabethan sonnet (four quatrains and a couplet, here a rhyme scheme of ABAB CDCD EFEF AA), the final couplet recalls the opening line, as if coming full circle around the islands — and at the same time, with equal parts poignancy and hope, rhyming “prayer” with “Finisterre,” the edge and end of the world.