"the distant Latin chanting of a train"

[flemmings]

Read this poem first on incandescens lj. It goes with today.

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 I 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

Found it at Poem of the Week, kind of a hodgepodge site whose owner doesn't delete the Taiwanese and Japanese spam he gets. Which um yes, I read, or tried to read.

But it has a poem by John Cleese!

Ode to Sean Hannity

Aping urbanity
Oozing with vanity
Plump as a manatee
Faking humanity
Journalistic calamity
Intellectual inanity
Fox Noise insanity
You’re a profanity
Hannity

Comments

[incandescens]

Believe it or not, I saw that very poem again today, on one of the advert panels in the Tube train I was on. (District Line, I think.)

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

The Flow can be scary like that.

[i-am-zan.livejournal.com]

*sigh* - Today I can understand that feeling.

Thank you for sharing.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

(hugs)