moments of grace commentary

dream	The poem describes a daydream - a moment out of on-going time. Like First Love it focuses on memory - although in that poem the emphasis is on just how much can be recollected, including the emotional effects of that past experience of Love. Here, the recovery of the past is more problematic, more patchy in what can be brought back from one's personal experience.
wordless, familiar place	Perhaps wordless because familiar; the first take on present, adult experience is that there is nothing to say about it - it just is as it is, without producing any distinct or fresh impression. (This would look forward to the phrase at the end of the third verse: 'The boredom since.' ; also, the comparison of present life to a loss of vitality in language in verse four.)
the small boat of the day	The idea of Time as an ocean is fairly widely used and seems to be suggested here by the sound of the trees in line 4. It is a kind of poetic 'idling' perhaps - the engine of comparisons just ticking over, not as striking or unexpected as many of Duffy's more charged images will be.
the postman	A figure suitable to morning - when the poem is set: a morning at home with apparently little that is presently demanding to do. He is compared to a fisherman - continuing the metaphor of the present time as floating on the vaster sea of Time. The letters he carries - the writing that has been produced in this present time - is modest. Just as the morning is compared to a small boat. Everything in this verse seems somehow undercharged - pleasant and relaxed enough, but not in itself memorable.
my hands free to remember	Nothing now needs to be done - so memory can be freely entertained. There's quite a bit of difference in this poem's relation to memory compared to others in the volume: for example - First Love - where the memory comes unbidden and strong; The Captain of the 1964 Top of the Form Team - where the recollection of the past is used by the speaker to beat up the present. (There's an element of this in Moments of Grace -see the 3rd and 4th verses - but milder, more wistful than bitter.) Beachcomber - where the memories are more actively pursued. Havisham - where the past continues to destroy the present.
moments of grace	Grace in the sense of mercy (the speaker is released - momentarily from work or present demands), and easiness. It also carries over with it traces of its theological origin - grace is a gift of god, not strictly deserved but freely given out of God's mercy. (The recruiting of religious terms for the richer experiences of ordinary life is continued in the last line, with its blessing. It is, of course, something that occurs in a whole range of the poems in Mean Time - which ends with Prayer.) This easy moment now is a gift - unexpected, but to be freely enjoyed; what it allows is recollection of earlier moments - also of grace, but in a slightly different way: these earlier moments, associated with childhood, were full of themselves, actively engaged with fresh impressions, not passively remembering the past. There will come into the poem a kind of wistfulness because of this - see verse 4: is this unengaged moment the best that Life now has to offer? Earlier moments of grace were active: 'In moments of grace we were verbs...' (The last verse will claw a little back for the present.)
Like this	Each verse - apart from verse 4, which more generally comments on the comparison of present days with the past - has an italicised phrase, which is as if spoken aloud during the speaker's reverie.
shaken by first love	This, of course, prefigures the topic of the poem which follows in the volume: First Love. Shaken is perhaps the most active of this poem's words - suggesting a kind of intensity, which unusually for Duffy, the poem as a whole doesn't really try to recreate. First Love as a poem will be quite different in its intensity; here, it is the odd detail which is used to suggest something of the intensity then. (First Love will concern itself with the intensity which carries across to now.) Why kiss a wall ? Perhaps to practise, perhaps in fantasy. Together with the names written on the hands, which began to run with the sweat produced by excitement - it is the visual recollection which brings back something of the past here. Although First Love will talk about how she clench [es her] eyes till the pictures return, the poem generally does not give those pictures: its focus is on the emotions now. In Moments of Grace there is, by contrast, a kind of distance - relatively speaking - from the emotions.
sly trance	This phrase suggests something of that distance - a kind of deliberate distance: 'hoping I will not feel me breathing too close across time.'

Moments of Grace commentary	Do you agree/disagree with this commentary? Anything you want to add? stevebrown@clara.co.uk
	complete text of the poem