Carol Ann Duffy

In his Holy Week talks in Canterbury Cathedral Rowan Williams quoted from Carol Ann Duffy's sonnet Prayer and praised the way she uses poems as places where new combinations of words and ideas spring together. Saturday's Guardian leader quoted the first four lines:

'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 minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.'

The leader goes on to quote Robert Kennedy's complaint that GDP failed to measure 'the health of our children, the joy of their play, the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate - and the beauty of our poetry...neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom not our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.'

This is a timely reminder to put all of this finance stuff into some sort of perspective