Some days Note the indefiniteness of the time.  This event  - the prayer uttering itself - happens: unplannable, no will involved - but also recurrently.  The poem seems like a 'religious' poem despite itself - 'faithless', but experiencing some of the residual emotions of a faith.  It is a poem about something like 'religious' feelings - but without the security of a religion.

..we cannot pray.. Why not? The impossibility is assumed, not explained.  It is, perhaps, an assumed 'cultural condition': the possibility of accepting or living within a formal religion has gone at this stage of History.  (And note the 'we': the poet is speaking on behalf of 'us all').  But the action of praying happens despite ourselves (or our lack of faith).

..utters itself.. Note the passivity of the expression.  Not 'we pray': the prayer occurs without willed action.

..The sieve of her hands.. A sharp little visually precise image.  The poem so far has been generalised - 'we..', 'a woman..'.  The visual 'wit' of the image brings the poem down to what seem like observed particulars.  'Sieve' refers to the fingers interlaced when held over the eyes - it's a visual comparison - but it also suggests the attempt by the 'woman' to screen out what she sees or experiences.  A desperate attempt - why else hold her hands over her eyes: a gesture of despair?  Through such images the poem implies a base-line experience of sadness and despair: what is labeled as the experience of 'prayer' is a sudden (temporary?) clearing of such sadness - an epiphany in James Joyce's terms, where some small event or scene suggests an order or significance in Life which ordinary life hides or denies.  In Duffy, as in Joyce, the experience is a bit mixed in status: somewhere in an uncertain territory between religion and aesthetics.

..the minims sung by a tree..  Another visual comparison, 'serious' wit.  The birds in the tree - seen  against the light sky - are just dark blobs - like the musical notation for minims, with the horizontal branches appearing like the staves  in written music.  Why is the source of the 'music' hidden by the image?  Perhaps because the music is just there - i.e. not produced.  So, it stands for 'Nature', not part of nature.

..a sudden gift. As good a short definition of an epiphany as any.  But, if a 'gift', who or what is the giver?  A question the poem sidesteps.

Some nights. As we come to the beginning of the second verse, it's time to notice how a structure is beginning to become apparent.  Consider the parallels between the first two verses:

     Some days....although we cannot pray.....a prayer utters....a woman....will stare..   lift her head from the sieve of her hands...

      Some nights..although we are faithless....the truth enters...a man.........will stand...hearing......small familiar pain...

Such a strict set of parallels/contrasts perhaps gives a poem of such uncertain suggestions and emotional shades a sense of order. It suggests perhaps a kind of completeness (this is our state - because of its representative examples), and a kind of definition (something has been clicked into place by the poem).  Consider also the poem's form as a sonnet - what that suggests about the poem's sense of tradition, completeness of statement, formal control.

The poem's form is both a means of giving order to fugitive feelings, and a form of irony as a response to traditional beliefs/forms of writing: it wants to recruit the promise of order given to experience by traditional forms, as well as highlight the difference of 'modern' experience - it wants to both use the sonnet form as a traditional form and also set up a discrepancy between the form and the content which is made to inhabit it.

...we are faithless.. Faithless - in what sense?  In the context of this poem the word primarily refers to the absence of a formal religious belief, but, in the context of the volume as a whole, it perhaps has some shade of meaning suggesting faithlessness to each other - and it becomes noticeable how isolated the individuals mentioned in this poem are.  Contact with others is through noises heard at a distance.

..the truth.. Notice the abstraction and generality of terms such as 'truth' and 'heart'.The poem is offering a general diagnosis.  It takes a certain kind of confidence to  wield such large abstract terms.  It's a critical judgment whether the poem manages to support such ambitions.

..small familiar pain..This is a poem which wants to be about the emotional colouration of 'our' everyday lives; it doesn't want to be about the dramatic (the baseline experience is small) nor the exceptional (the feeling is familiar - i.e. banal, well known) - and it assumes a kind of general sadness (pain). The moments described stand out against this general and assumed experience of sadness.

..distant Latin chanting of a train..  Why Latin?  Why the sound of a train?  The epiphanies of this poem are all heard - and at a greater or lesser distance. ( the minims sung...the..chanting of a train..piano scales.. someone calls a child's name....the radio's prayer...).  There seems to be something peculiar here. A prayer is normally thought of something sent - transmitted, rather than received or heard.  The reversal must seem deliberate.

Latin chanting.. suggests the rhythmical chanting of the conjugation of Latin verbs - a feature perhaps of Duffy's own educational experience.  'Latin' also suggests the traditional language of church services - particularly Catholic services - especially when combined with chanting.  The distance in space also suggests a distance in time - and as the poem goes on the temporal dimension becomes more important: the important events are all what might recall childhood.

'Latin' also as a sound suggesting meaning - but not quite understood.

Pray for us now  (note to follow - relate to 'Animula' by T S Eliot)

........

Compare 'Prayer' by Carol Ann Duffy to 'Prayer' by George Herbert.

What do the two poems share - and what makes them different?