Beggar's Prayer

I love the borrowing from Carol Ann Duffy's 'Prayer', in this... For your preusal, the poem:

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 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.

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

I believe the "I've got a bottle of your blood inside me" is a reference to wine, not being pregnant. She addresses the beginning of the verse to God ("Lord, you just dropped me here by the side of the road") and so I believe she means a bottle of Jesus' blood, e.g. wine turns to blood for communion.

She sad about the loss of a loved one (could be another reference to her boyfriend who died some years ago). "the white-shoulder mountains pointed above" is saying that God is the one who took her love away from her. She goes on to tell Him that he dropped her on the side of the road. The "bottle of blood inside of me" could still be referring to God.

i think everyone agrees on, that she had a husband/boyfriend etc. who died, and now she is grieving over his death. I just wanted to say (my opinion), i think that the 'i've got a bottle of your blood inside me' line means, that her husband/boyfriend saved her life by giving her his blood or something, if he was about to die anyways...or something like that.. :)

This song is about processing grief.

"Mamma said, lift your head from the sieve of your hands. Mamma said eventually this hurting will end. But the shockwaves on my bones will linger, Like the ghost of you here in my bed."

She's lost her lover and her mother, the wise advisor, is telling her that it gets better, but the memory of her lover still hurts.

"When I was lost you thought me a beautiful find. Sometimes I think of you sleeping, so sleep for a while. I find myself asking who'd do this to love, And the white-shouldered mountains they pointed above."

She reminesces fondly of her lover. Those pleasant thoughts turn sour as she asks the general question we all ask when we're grieving, "Why?"

"Lord you just dropped me here by the side of this road. Out here's too cold and I don't want to walk it alone. I've got a bottle of your blood inside me, And on old beggar's prayer on the tip of my tongue."

She's contemplating giving up, unable to comprehend how to move on without her love. That hole we fill in our lives when we lose someone. She's drinking and praying, as ways of coping with the grief.

"Mamma said, lift your head from the sieve of your hands. Mamma said that eventually this hurting will end... "

After going through the process of grief, this is all that can be said and done. We lift our heads from the sieves of our hands. The hurting ends, we continue to live on.

She's pregnant - "I've got a bottle of your blood inside me". It's within the baby she carries. I think the husband has died, and Chamoses I agree on the concept of her blaming God. And that leaves her mother in the role of comforting her and helping her... to give her hope to survive.
Now she's left whispering the beggar's prayer to be able to survive and care for her child.