Carol Ann Duffy Quotes

I like to use simple words, but in a complicated way.

I like pouring your tea, lifting the heavy pot, and tipping it up, so the fragrant liquid streams in your china cup. Or when you’re away, or at work, I like to think of your cupped hands as you sip, as you sip, of the faint half-smile of your lips. I like the questions – sugar? – milk? – and the answers I don’t know by heart, yet, for I see your soul in your eyes, and I forget. Jasmine, Gunpowder, Assam, Earl Grey, Ceylon, I love tea’s names. Which tea would you like? I say but it’s any tea for you, please, any time of day, as the women harvest the slopes for the sweetest leaves, on Mount Wu-Yi, and I am your lover, smitten, straining your tea. - Tea

What will you do now with the gift of your left life?

I'm not the first or the last to stand on a hillock, watching the man she married prove to the world he's a total, utter, absolute, Grade A pillock. - Mrs Icarus

The stars are filming us for no one.

You have me like a drawing, erased, coloured in, untitled, signed by your tongue.

Better off dead than giving in; not taking what you want.

But life, they said, means life. Dying inside. The Devil was evil, mad, but I was the Devil's wife which made me worse. I howled in my cell. If the Devil is gone then how could this be hell?

Went to the Zoo, I said to Him- Something about that chimpanzee over there reminds me of you.

She stood upon a continent of ice, which sparkled between sea and sky, endless and dazzling, as though the world kept all its treasure there; a scale which balanced poetry and prayer.

The bed we loved in was a spinning world of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seas where we would dive for pearls. My lover’s words were shooting stars which fell to earth as kisses on these lips; my body now a softer rhyme to his, now echo, assonance; his touch a verb dancing in the centre of a noun. Some nights, I dreamed he’d written me, the bed a page beneath his writer’s hands. Romance and drama played by touch, by scent, by taste. In the other bed, the best, our guests dozed on, dribbling their prose. My living laughing love - I hold him in the casket of my widow’s head as he held me upon that next best bed. - Anne Hathaway

Love’s language starts, stops, starts; the right words flowing or clotting in the heart.

Poets deal in writing about feelings and trying to find the language and images for intense feelings.

bees are the batteries of orchards, gardens, guard them.

Somewhere on the other side of this wide night and the distance between us, I am thinking of you. The room is turning slowly away from the moon. This is pleasurable. Or shall I cross that out and say it is sad? In one of the tenses I singing an impossible song of desire that you cannot hear. La lala la. See? I close my eyes and imagine the dark hills I would have to cross to reach you. For I am in love with you and this is what it is like or what it is like in words.

For this, let gardens grow, where beelines end, sighing in roses, saffron blooms, buddleia; where bees pray on their knees, sing, praise in pear trees, plum trees; bees are the batteries of orchards, gardens, guard them.

And here you come with a shield for a heart and a sword for a tongue

I took an axe To a willow to see how it wept. I took an axe to a salmon To see how it leapt. I took an axe to the wolf As he slept.

Words, words were truly alive on the tongue, in the head, warm, beating, frantic, winged; music and blood.

Poetry, above all, is a series of intense moments - its power is not in narrative. I'm not dealing with facts, I'm dealing with emotion.

Poets sing our human music for us.

Then he started his period. One week in bed. Two doctors in. Three painkillers four times a day. And later a letter to the powers-that-be demanding full-paid menstrual leave twelve weeks per year. I see him now, his selfish pale face peering at the moon through the bathroom window. The curse, he said, the curse. - Mrs Tiresias

Beauty is fame.

No jewel hold a candle to the cuckoo spit hung from the blade of grass at your ear. No chandelier see you better lit than here.

It took ten years In the woods to tell that a mushroom Stoppers the mouth of a buried corpse, that birds Are the uttered thought of trees, that a greying wolf Howls the same old song at the moon, year in, year out Season after season, same rhyme, same reason.

I like pouring your tea, lifting the heavy pot, and tipping it up, so the fragrant liquid steams in your china cup. Or when you're away or at work, I like to think of your cupped hands as you sip, as you sip, of the faint half-smile of your lips.

The Latin names of plants blur like belief.

Like the sand and the oyster, it's a creative irritant. In each poem, I'm trying to reveal a truth, so it can't have a fictional beginning.

Out of the forest I come with my flowers, singing, all alone.

If poetry could truly tell it backwards, then it would.

Then he started his period. One week in bed. Two doctors in. Three painkillers four times a day. And later a letter to the powers-that-be demanding full-paid menstrual leave twelve weeks per year.

Uninvited, the thought of you stayed too late in my head, so I went to bed, dreaming you hard, hard, woke with your name, like tears, soft, salt, on my lips, the sound of its bright syllables like a charm, like a spell. Falling in love is glamorous hell; the crouched, parched heart like a tiger ready to kill; a flame's fierce licks under the skin. Into my life, larger than life, beautiful, you strolled in. I hid in my ordinary days, in the long grass of routine, in my camouflage rooms. You sprawled in my gaze, staring back from anyone's face, from the shape of a cloud, from the pining, earth-struck moon which gapes at me as I open the bedroom door. The curtains stir. There you are on the bed, like a gift, like a touchable dream. "You

Love’s time’s beggar, but even a single hour, bright as a dropped coin, makes love rich. We find an hour together, spend it not on flowers or wine, but the whole of the summer sky and a grass ditch. For thousands of seconds we kiss; your hair like treasure on the ground; the Midas light turning your limbs to gold. Time slows, for here we are millionaires, backhanding the night so nothing dark will end our shining hour, no jewel hold a candle to the cuckoo spit hung from the blade of grass at your ear, no chandelier or spotlight see you better lit than here. Now. Time hates love, wants love poor, but love spins gold, gold, gold from straw.

In the convent, y'all, I tend the gardens, watch things grow, pray for the immortal soul of rock 'n' roll. They call me Sister Presley here, The Reverend Mother digs the way I move my hips just like my brother. Gregorian chant drifts out across the herbs Pascha nostrum immolatus est... I wear a simple habit, darkish hues, a wimple with a novice-sewn lace band, a rosary, a chain of keys, a pair of good and sturdy blue suede shoes. I think of it as Graceland here, a land of grace. It puts my trademark slow lopsided smile back on my face. Lawdy. I'm alive and well. Long time since I walked down Lonely Street towards Heartbreak Hotel. - Elvis's Twin Sister

Look, we all have wishes; granted. But who has wishes granted?

The living walk by the edge of a vast lake near the wise, drowned silence of the dead.

along with the rest of our helpless world; and, O, if you could, you would, where lovers walked, sell off trees and not give a flying fuck for the muted mausoleums of the bees.

I think of him in certain lights, dawn, late afternoon,...

Not a red rose or a satin heart. I give you an onion. It is a moon wrapped in brown paper, It promises light Like the careful undressing of love. Here. It will blind you with tears Like a lover.

Again, the endless northern rain between us like a veil. Tonight, I know exactly where you are, which row, which seat. I stand at my back door. The light pollution blindfolds every star. I hold my hand out to the rain, simply to feel it, wet and literal. It spills and tumbles in my palm, a broken rosary. Devotion to you lets me see the concert hall, lit up, the other side of town, then see you leave there, one of hundreds in the dark, your black umbrella raised. If rain were words, could talk, somehow, against your skin, I’d say look up, let it utter on your face. Now hear my love for you. Now walk. - Bridgewater Hall

Miles Away I want you and you are not here. I pause in this garden, breathing the colour thought is before language into still air. Even your name is a pale ghost and, though I exhale it again and again, it will not stay with me. Tonight I make you up, imagine you, your movements clearer than the words I have you say you said before. Wherever you are now, inside my head you fix me with a look, standing here whilst cool late light dissolves into the earth. I have got your mouth wrong, but still it smiles. I hold you closer, miles away, inventing love, until the calls of nightjars interrupt and turn what was to come, was certain, into memory. The stars are filming us for no one.

Frau Freud Ladies, for argument’s sake, let us say that I’ve seen my fair share of ding-a-ling, member and jock, of todger and nudger and percy and cock, of tackle, of three-for-a-bob, of willy and winky; in fact, you could say, I’m as au fait with Hunt-the-Salami as Ms M. Lewinsky – equally sick up to here with the beef bayonet, the pork sword, the saveloy, love-muscle, night-crawler, dong, the dick, prick, dipstick and wick, the rammer, the slammer, the rupert, the shlong. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve no axe to grind with the snake in the trousers, the wife’s best friend, the weapon, the python – I suppose what I mean is, ladies, dear ladies, the average penis – not pretty . . . the squint of its envious solitary eye . . . one’s feeling of pity . . .

Give me, you said, on our very first night, the forest. I rose from the bed and went out, and when I returned, you listened, enthralled, to the shadowy story I told. Give me the river, you asked the next night, then I’ll love you forever. I slipped from your arms and was gone, and when I came back, you listened, at dawn, to the glittering story I told. Give me, you said, the gold from the sun. A third time, I got up and dressed, and when I came home, you sprawled on my breast, for the dazzling story I told. Give me, the hedgerows, give me the fields, I slid from the warmth of our sheets, and when I returned, to kiss you from sleep, you stirred at the story I told. give me the silvery cold, of the moon. I pulled on my boots and my coat, but when i came back, moonlight on your throat outshone the story I told Give me, you howled on our sixth night together, the wind in the trees. You turned to the wall as I left, and when I came home, I saw you were deaf to the blustering story I told. Give me the sky, all the space it can hold. I left you, the last night we loved, and when I returned, you were gone with the gold, and the silver, the river, the forest, the fields, and this is the story I’ve told. "Give

I tend the mobile now like an injured bird We text, text, text our significant words. I re-read your first, your second, your third, look for your small xx, feeling absurd. The codes we send arrive with a broken chord. I try to picture your hands, their image is blurred. Nothing my thumbs press will ever be heard. "Text

I found the words at the back of a drawer, wrapped in black cloth, like three rings slipped from a dead woman’s hand, cold, dull gold. I had held them before, years ago, then put them away, forgetting whatever it was I could use them to say. I touched the first to my lips, like a pledge, like a kiss, and my breath warmed them, the words I needed to utter this, small words, and few. I rubbed at them till they gleamed in my palm – I love you, I love you, I love you – as though they were new.

Cold, I was, like snow, like ivory. I thought "He will not touch me", but he did. He kissed my stone-cool lips. I lay still as though I’d died. He stayed. He thumbed my marbled eyes. He spoke - blunt endearments, what he’d do and how. His words were terrible. My ears were sculpture, stone-deaf shells. I heard the sea. I drowned him out. I heard him shout. He brought me presents, polished pebbles, little bells. I didn’t blink, was dumb. He brought me pearls and necklaces and rings. He called them girly things. He ran his clammy hands along my limbs. I didn’t shrink, played statue, shtum. He let his fingers sink into my flesh, he squeezed, he pressed. I would not bruise. He looked for marks, for purple hearts, for inky stars, for smudgy clues. His nails were claws. I showed no scratch, no scrape, no scar. He propped me up on pillows, jawed all night. My heart was ice, was glass. His voice was gravel, hoarse. He talked white black. So I changed tack, grew warm, like candle wax, kissed back, was soft, was pliable, began to moan, got hot, got wild, arched, coiled, writhed, begged for his child, and at the climax screamed my head off - all an act. And haven’t seen him since. Simple as that

A whole wall was crimson, gold, aglow with books Words, words were truly alive on the tongue, in the head Warm, beating, frantic, winged; music and blood.

We will tire each other out, making our homes in one another’s arms.

Just as the body is shaped for movement, the mind is shaped for poetry. Rhythm and rhyme aid recall. Poems are always rhythmic but not always rhyming. In the same way that melody became rather suspect in twentieth-century classical music – atonal fractures being the mark of seriousness – so Modernism re-branded rhyme as pastoral, lovesick, feminine, superficial. Fine for kids and tea-towels, not fine for the muscular combative voice of the urban poet. It has taken a long time for rhyme to return to favour. Rap, and the rise of performance poetry, has been part of that return.

C’est la vie. When I got ill, it hurt like hell. I bought a kidney with my credit card, then I got well. I keep Faust’s secret still –the clever, cunning, callous bastard didn’t have a soul to sell.

When did your name change from a proper noun to a charm? Its three vowels like jewels on the thread of my breath. Its consonants brushing my mouth like a kiss. I love your name. I say it again and again in this summer rain. I see it, discreet in the alphabet, like a wish. I pray it into the night till its letters are light. I hear your name rhyming, rhyming, rhyming with everything. "Name

Light gatherer. You fell from a star into my lap, the soft lamp at the bedside mirrored in you, and now you shine like a snowgirl, a buttercup under a chin, the wide blue yonder you squeal at and fly in

I found the words at the back of a drawer, wrapped in black cloth, like three rings slipped from a dead woman’s hand, cold, dull gold. I had held them before, years ago, then put them away, forgetting whatever it was I could use them to say. I touched the first to my lips, like a pledge, like a kiss, and my breath warmed them, the words I needed to utter this, small words, and few. I rubbed at them till they gleamed in my palm – I love you, I love you, I love you – as though they were new. "Finding the Words

I stared in the mirror. Love gone bad showed me a Gorgon. I stared at a dragon. Fire spewed from the mouth of a mountain. And here you come with a shield for a heart and a sword for a tongue and your girls, your girls. Wasn’t I beautiful Wasn’t I fragrant and young? Look at me now.

At childhood’s end, the houses petered out into playing fields, the factory, allotments kept, like mistresses, by kneeling married men, the silent railway line, the hermit’s caravan, till you came at last to the edge of the woods. It was there that I first clapped eyes on the wolf. He stood in a clearing, reading his verse out loud in his wolfy drawl, a paperback in his hairy paw, red wine staining his bearded jaw. What big ears he had! What big eyes he had! What teeth! In the interval, I made quite sure he spotted me, sweet sixteen, never been, babe, waif, and bought me a drink, my first. You might ask why. Here’s why. Poetry. The wolf, I knew, would lead me deep into the woods, away from home, to a dark tangled thorny place lit by the eyes of owls. I crawled in his wake, my stockings ripped to shreds, scraps of red from my blazer snagged on twig and branch, murder clues. I lost both shoes but got there, wolf’s lair, better beware. Lesson one that night, breath of the wolf in my ear, was the love poem. I clung till dawn to his thrashing fur, for what little girl doesn’t dearly love a wolf? Then I slid from between his heavy matted paws and went in search of a living bird – white dove – which flew, straight, from my hands to his hope mouth. One bite, dead. How nice, breakfast in bed, he said, licking his chops. As soon as he slept, I crept to the back of the lair, where a whole wall was crimson, gold, aglow with books. Words, words were truly alive on the tongue, in the head, warm, beating, frantic, winged; music and blood. But then I was young – and it took ten years in the woods to tell that a mushroom stoppers the mouth of a buried corpse, that birds are the uttered thought of trees, that a greying wolf howls the same old song at the moon, year in, year out, season after season, same rhyme, same reason. I took an axe to a willow to see how it wept. I took an axe to a salmon to see how it leapt. I took an axe to the wolf as he slept, one chop, scrotum to throat, and saw the glistening, virgin white of my grandmother’s bones. I filled his old belly with stones. I stitched him up. Out of the forest I come with my flowers, singing, all alone. Little Red-Cap

But behind each player stood a line of ghosts unable to win. Eve. Ashputtel. Marilyn Monroe. Rapunzel slashing wildly at her hair. Bessie Smith unloved and down and out. Bluebeard's wives, Henry VIII's, Snow White cursing the day she left the seven dwarves, Diana, Princess of Wales. The Sheepish Beast came in with a tray of schnapps at the end of the game and we stood for the toast -"fay wray"- then tossed our fiery drinks to the back of our crimson throats. Bad girls. Serious ladies. Mourning our dead.

There are not enough faces. Your own gapes back at you on someone else, but paler, then the moment when you see the next one and forget yourself. It must be dreams that makes us different, must be private cells inside a common skull. One has the other's look and has another memory. Despair stares out from tube-trains at itself running on the platform for the closing door. Everyone you meet is telling wordless barefaced truths. Sometimes the crowd yields one you put a name to, snapping fiction into fact. Mostly your lover passes in the rain and does not know you when you speak. - I Remember Me

Rapture" Thought of by you all day, I think of you. The birds sing in the shelter of a tree. Above the prayer of rain, unacred blue, not paradise, goes nowhere endlessly. How does it happen that our lives can drift far from our selves, while we stay trapped in time, queuing for death? It seems nothing will shift the pattern of our days, alter the rhyme we make with loss to assonance with bliss. Then love comes, like a sudden flight of birds from earth to heaven after rain. Your kiss, recalled, unstrings, like pearls, this chain of words. Huge skies connect us, joining here to there. Desire and passion on the thinking air.

Girls, I was dead and down in the Underworld, a shade, a shadow of my former self, nowhen. It was a place where language stopped, a black full stop, a black hole Where the words had to come to an end. And end they did there, last words, famous or not. It suited me down to the ground. So imagine me there, unavailable, out of this world, then picture my face in that place of Eternal Repose, in the one place you’d think a girl would be safe from the kind of a man who follows her round writing poems, hovers about while she reads them, calls her His Muse, and once sulked for a night and a day because she remarked on his weakness for abstract nouns. Just picture my face when I heard - Ye Gods - a familiar knock-knock at Death’s door. Him. Big O. Larger than life. With his lyre and a poem to pitch, with me as the prize. Things were different back then. For the men, verse-wise, Big O was the boy. Legendary. The blurb on the back of his books claimed that animals, aardvark to zebra, flocked to his side when he sang, fish leapt in their shoals at the sound of his voice, even the mute, sullen stones at his feet wept wee, silver tears. Bollocks. (I’d done all the typing myself, I should know.) And given my time all over again, rest assured that I’d rather speak for myself than be Dearest, Beloved, Dark Lady, White Goddess etc., etc. In fact girls, I’d rather be dead. But the Gods are like publishers, usually male, and what you doubtless know of my tale is the deal. Orpheus strutted his stuff. The bloodless ghosts were in tears. Sisyphus sat on his rock for the first time in years. Tantalus was permitted a couple of beers. The woman in question could scarcely believe her ears. Like it or not, I must follow him back to our life - Eurydice, Orpheus’ wife - to be trapped in his images, metaphors, similes, octaves and sextets, quatrains and couplets, elegies, limericks, villanelles, histories, myths… He’d been told that he mustn’t look back or turn round, but walk steadily upwards, myself right behind him, out of the Underworld into the upper air that for me was the past. He’d been warned that one look would lose me for ever and ever. So we walked, we walked. Nobody talked. Girls, forget what you’ve read. It happened like this - I did everything in my power to make him look back. What did I have to do, I said, to make him see we were through? I was dead. Deceased. I was Resting in Peace. Passé. Late. Past my sell-by date… I stretched out my hand to touch him once on the back of the neck. Please let me stay. But already the light had saddened from purple to grey. It was an uphill schlep from death to life and with every step I willed him to turn. I was thinking of filching the poem out of his cloak, when inspiration finally struck. I stopped, thrilled. He was a yard in front. My voice shook when I spoke - Orpheus, your poem’s a masterpiece. I’d love to hear it again… He was smiling modestly, when he turned, when he turned and he looked at me. What else? I noticed he hadn’t shaved. I waved once and was gone. The dead are so talented. The living walk by the edge of a vast lake near, the wise, drowned silence of the dead.

Absence " Then the birds stitching the dawn with their song have patterned your name. Then the green bowl of the garden filling with light is your gaze. Then the lawn lengthening and warming itself is your skin. Then a cloud disclosing itself overhead is your opening hand. Then the first seven bells from the church pine on the air. Then the sun's soft bite on my face is your mouth. Then a bee in a rose is your fingertip touching me here. Then the trees bending and meshing their leaves are what we would do. Then my steps to the river are text to a prayer printing the ground. Then the river searching its bank for your shape is desire. Then a fish nuzzling for the water's throat has a lover's ease. Then a shawl of sunlight dropped in the grass is a garment discarded. Then a sudden scatter of summer rain is your tongue. Then a butterfly paused on a trembling leaf is your breath. Then the gauzy mist relaxed on the ground is your pose. Then the fruit from the cherry tree falling on grass is your kiss, your kiss. Then the day's hours are theatres of air where I watch you entranced. Then the sun's light going down from the sky is the length of your back. Then the evening bells over the rooftops are lovers' vows. Then the river staring up, lovesick for the moon, is my long night. Then the stars between us are love urging its light.

Next to my own skin, her pearls. My mistress bids me wear them, warm them, until evening when I'll brush her hair. At six, I place them round her cool, white throat. All day I think of her, resting in the Yellow Room, contemplating silk or taffeta, which gown tonight? She fans herself whilst I work willingly, my slow heat entering each pearl. Slack on my neck, her rope. She's beautiful. I dream about her in my attic bed; picture her dancing with tall men, puzzled by my faint, persistent scent beneath her French perfume, her milky stones. I dust her shoulders with a rabbit's foot, watch the soft blush seep through her skin like an indolent sigh. In her looking-glass my red lips part as though I want to speak. Full moon. Her carriage brings her home. I see her every movement in my head.... Undressing, taking off her jewels, her slim hand reaching for the case, slipping naked into bed, the way she always does.... And I lie here awake, knowing the pearls are cooling even now in the room where my mistress sleeps. All night I feel their absence and I burn.

The curtains stir. There you are on the bed, like a gift. Like a touchable dream.

When I was done, and bloody to the wrist, I squatted down among the murdered music of the bells and pissed.

The Devil was evil, mad, but I was the Devil’s wife which made me worse. I howled in my cell. If the Devil was gone then how could this be hell?

I’m not the first or the last to stand on a hillock, watching the man she married prove to the world he’s a total, utter, absolute, Grade A pillock.

Maybe we could sing together? Just teach me the right words, I learn fast. Don't stare like that. I'll start where you leave off. I can't tell you anything if you don't throw me a cue line. We're dying a death right here. Can you dance? No. I don't suppose you'd be doing this if you could dance. Right? Why do you keep me in that black box? I can ask questions too, you know. I can see that worries you. Tough. So funny things happen to everyone on the way to most places. Come on. You can do better than that, can't you?

I swear your love would raise me out of my grave, in my flesh and blood, like Lazarus; hungry for this, and this, and this, your living kiss.

Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer utters itself.

To the Unknown Lover Horrifying, the very thought of you whoever you are, future knife to my scar, stay where you are. Be handsome, beautiful, drop-dead gorgeous, keep away. Read my lips. No way. OK? This old heart of mine’s an empty purse. These ears are closed. Don't phone, want dinner, make things worse. Your little quirks? Your wee endearing ways? What makes you you, all that? Stuff it, mount it, hang it on the wall, sell tickets, I won't come. Get back. Get lost. Get real. Get a life. Keep schtum. And just, you must, remember this — there'll be no kiss, no clinch, no smoochy dance, no true romance. You are Anonymous. You're Who? Here's not looking, kid, at you. Carol Ann Duffy, Love Poems (Picador USA, February 1st 2010)

For me, poetry is the music of being human

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.

Valentín No una rosa roja o un corazón de satín. Te doy una cebolla. Es una luna envuelta en papel café. Promete luz como el cuidadoso desnudar del amor. Ten aquí. Te cegará con lágrimas como un amante. Hará de tu reflejo una tambaleante foto de aflicción. Intento ser sincera. No una simpática tarjeta o un beso-grama. Te doy una cebolla. Su fiero beso permanecerá en tus labios, posesivo y fiel como somos nosotros, por tanto tiempo como lo seamos. Tómala Sus círculos platinados se abrevan en una sortija de matrimonio, si tu quieres. Letal. Su aroma se aferrará a tus dedos, se aferrará a tu cuchillo.

So I was hard on the Beast, win or lose, When I got upstairs, those tragic girls in my head, Turfing him out of bed; standing alone On the balcony, the night so cold I could taste the stars On the tip of my tongue. And I made a prayer – Thumbing my pearls, the tears of Mary, one by one, Like a rosary – words for the lost, the captive beautiful, The wives, those less fortunate than we. The moon was a hand-mirror breathed on by a Queen. My breath was a chiffon scarf for an elegant ghost. I turned to go back inside. Bring me the Beast for the night. Bring me the wine-cellar key. Let the less-loving one be me. - an excerpt from Mrs. Beast -

A suspicion, a doubt, a jealousy grew in my mind, which turned the hairs on my head to filthy snakes, as though my thoughts hissed and spat on my scalp. My bride’s breath soured, stank in the grey bags of my lungs. I’m foul mouthed now, foul tongued, yellow fanged. There are bullet tears in my eyes. Are you terrified? Be terrified. It’s you I love, perfect man, Greek God, my own; but I know you’ll go, betray me, stray from home. So better by far for me if you were stone. I glanced at a buzzing bee, a dull grey pebble fell to the ground. I glanced at a singing bird, a handful of dusty gravel spattered down. I looked at a ginger cat, a housebrick shattered a bowl of milk. I looked at a snuffling pig, a boulder rolled in a heap of shit. I stared in the mirror. Love gone bad showed me a Gorgon. I stared at a dragon. Fire spewed from the mouth of a mountain. And here you come with a shield for a heart and a sword for a tongue and your girls, your girls. Wasn’t I beautiful? Wasn’t I fragrant and young? Look at me now. - Medusa by Carol Ann Duffy -

I hold him in the casket of my widow’s head as he held me upon that next best bed.

I uttered my prayer: Give me your honey. Bless my tongue with rhyme, poetry, song.

his touch a verb dancing in the centre of a noun.

Then you are writing home. The voice in your head Recites the letter in a local dialect; behind that Is the sound of your mother singing to you, All that time ago, and now you do not know Why your eyes are watering and what’s the word for this.