Carol Ann Duffy - Words, words were truly alive on the tongue, in the head, wa...

When did your namechange from a proper nounto a charm?Its three vowelslike jewelson the thread of my breath.Its consonantsbrushing my mouthlike a kiss.I love your name.I say it again and againin this summer rain.I see it,discreet in the alphabet,like a wish.I pray itinto the nighttill its letters are light.I hear your namerhyming, rhyming,rhyming with everything."Name

Carol Ann Duffy

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 syllableslike a charm, like a spell.Falling in loveis glamorous hell; the crouched, parched heartlike 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 meas I open the bedroom door. The curtains stir. There you areon the bed, like a gift, like a touchable dream."You

Carol Ann Duffy

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 goldfrom 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 throatoutshone the story I toldGive me, you howledon 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 deafto the blustering story I told.Give me the sky, all the spaceit 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

Carol Ann Duffy

I found the words at the back of a drawer,wrapped in black cloth, like three ringsslipped from a dead woman’s hand, cold,dull gold. I had held them before,years ago,then put them away, forgetting whatever it wasI could use them to say. I touched the first to my lips,like a pledge, like a kiss,and my breathwarmed 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

Carol Ann Duffy

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 flowersor wine, but the whole of the summer sky and a grass ditch.For thousands of seconds we kiss; your hairlike treasure on the ground; the Midas lightturning your limbs to gold. Time slows, for herewe are millionaires, backhanding the nightso nothing dark will end our shining hour,no jewel hold a candle to the cuckoo spithung from the blade of grass at your ear,no chandelier or spotlight see you better litthan here. Now. Time hates love, wants love poor,but love spins gold, gold, gold from straw.

Carol Ann Duffy

I tend the mobile nowlike an injured birdWe text, text, textour significant words.I re-read your first,your second, your third,look for your small xx,feeling absurd.The codes we sendarrive with a broken chord.I try to picture your hands,their image is blurred.Nothing my thumbs presswill ever be heard."Text

Carol Ann Duffy

At childhood’s end, the houses petered outinto playing fields, the factory, allotmentskept, 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 earshe 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 placelit by the eyes of owls. I crawled in his wake,my stockings ripped to shreds, scraps of red from my blazersnagged on twig and branch, murder clues. I lost both shoesbut 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, forwhat little girl doesn’t dearly love a wolf?Then I slid from between his heavy matted pawsand 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 backof 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 mushroomstoppers the mouth of a buried corpse, that birdsare the uttered thought of trees, that a greying wolfhowls the same old song at the moon, year in, year out,season after season, same rhyme, same reason. I took an axeto a willow to see how it wept. I took an axe to a salmonto see how it leapt. I took an axe to the wolfas 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

Carol Ann Duffy

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