Help understanding the context of this poem

[Mostafa Eldamaty]

Hello,

Our English teacher gave us several poems of which we should choose only 2 to compare & contrast them, in order to practice paper 1 in Lit/Lang HL.

This is the poem. I really understand the 2nd and 3rd stanzas, but the 1st and the 4th ones are a little bit confusing.

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. Darkness outside. Inside, the radio's prayer -
Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.

Thanks in advance

[Sandwich]

So as a consequence of having woken up to BBC Radio 4 at unearthly hours of the morning, I can reveal that the last line is actually the shipping forecast. It's a piece they do on the radio telling sailors what force & direction the wind is blowing. Rockall, Malin, Dogger etc. are the names of regions of water off the coast of the UK.

I think a lot of people wouldn't know that! If something like that DID come up in the exam, you've got to do your best not to be thrown by it and just try and take as much information as possible to give you some clue what it might be about. It says already that it's the "radio's prayer" so you can guess it's on the radio. Then just move on and ignore it, because if you worry about what it means and make something up that's the worst thing you could do in the real exam. Would be my advice Try to find context to interpret it and if you can't, don't worry, just carry on.

If you don't understand a stanza then remember that poems are a whole. So if you understand the 2nd stanza, with that in mind, look back at the 1st stanza and use it to help you interpret what might be going on. The first line is actually key to the message of the poem - that even though we do not formally pray, small moments of contemplation occur throughout the day in the things we hear and do - and if you've understood the 2nd stanza then you'll be able to look back at the 1st and read it in the context of this idea.

Even the radio bit in stanza 4 you can bet your money on being part of the same theme as you identified in stanzas 2+3 which you did understand. So whatever dogger, malin etc. are you can bet they're probably something to do with a little bit of routine daily life which are contemplative and 'prayer' like somehow.

Basically when you get stuck with any poetry in the exam, just go for context. Take the bits you do understand and try to fashion some sense out of the bits which confuse you using that as a base.