Carol Ann Duffy – Poems for Study

A Healthy Meal

The gourmet tastes the secret dreams of cowstossed lightly in garlic. Behind the green door, swishof ox tails languish on an earthen dish. Here arewishbones and pinkies; fingerbowls will absolve guilt.

Capped teeth chatter to a kidney or at the breast 5of something which once flew. These hearts knewno love and on their beds of saffron rice they liebeyond reproach. What is the claret like? Blood.

On table six, the language of tongues is braisedin armagnac. The woman chewing suckling pig 10must sleep with her husband later. Leg,saddle and breast bleat against pure white cloth.

Alter calf to veal in four attempts. This isthe power of words; knife, tripe, lights, charcuterie.A fat man orders his rare and a fine sweat 15bastes his face. There are napkins to wipe the evidence

and sauces to gag the groans of abattoirs. The menulists the recent dead in French, from which they orderoffal, poultry, fish. Meat flops in the jowls. BelchDeath moves in the bowels. You are what you eat. 20

Before You Were Mine

I'm ten years away from the corner you laugh onwith your pals, Maggie McGeeney and Jean Duff.The three of you bend from the waist, holdingeach other, or your knees, and shriek at the pavement.Your polka-dot dress blows round your legs. Marilyn. 5

I'm not here yet. The thought of me doesn't occurin the ballroom with the thousand eyes, the fizzy, movie tomorrowsthe right walk home could bring. I knew you would dancelike that. Before you were mine, your Ma stands at the closewith a hiding for the late one. You reckon it's worth it. 10

The decade ahead of my loud, possessive yell was the best one, eh?I remember my hands in those high-heeled red shoes, relics,and now your ghost clatters toward me over George Squaretill I see you, clear as scent, under the tree,with its lights, and whose small bites on your neck, sweetheart? 15

Cha cha cha! You'd teach me the steps on the way home from Mass, stamping stars from the wrong pavement. Even thenI wanted the bold girl winking in Portobello, somewherein Scotland, before I was born. That glamorous love lastswhere you sparkle and waltz and laugh before you were mine. 20

Havisham

Beloved sweetheart bastard. Not a day since then

I haven’t wished him dead. Prayed for it

so hard I’ve dark green pebbles for eyes,

ropes on the back of my hands I could strangle with.

Spinster. I stink and remember. Whole days 5

in bed cawing Nooooo at the wall; the dress

yellowing, trembling if I open the wardrobe;

the slewed mirror, full-length, her, myself, who did this

to me? Puce curses that are sounds not words.

Some nights better, the lost body over me, 10

my fluent tongue in its mount in its ear

then down till I suddenly bite awake. Love’s

hate behind a white veil; a red balloon bursting

in my face. Bang. I stabbed at a wedding-cake.

Give me a male corpse for a long slow honeymoon. 15

Don’t think it’s only the heart that b-b-b-breaks.

Head of English

Today we have a poet in the class.A real live poet with a published book.Notice the inkstained fingers girls. Perhapswe’re going to witness verse hot from the press.Who knows. Please show your appreciation 5by clapping. Not too loud. Now

sit up straight and listen. Rememberthe lesson on assonance, for not all poems,sadly, rhyme these days. Still. Never mind.Whispering’s, as always, out of bounds - 10but do feel free to raise some questions.After all, we’re paying forty pounds.

Those of you with English Second Languagesee me after break. We’re fortunateto have this person in our midst. 15Season of mists and so on and so forth.I’ve written quite a bit of poetry myself,am doing Kipling with the Lower Fourth.

Right. That’s enough from me. On with the Muse.Open a window at the back. We don’t 20want winds of change about the place.Take notes, but don’t write reams. Just an essayon the poet’s themes. Fine. Off we go.Convince us that there’s something we don’t know.

Well. Really. Run along now girls. I’m sure 25that gave an insight to an outside view.Applause will do. Thank youvery much for coming here today. Lunchin the hall? Do hang about. UnfortunatelyI have to dash. Tracey will show you out. 30

In Mrs Tilscher’s Class

You could travel up the Blue Nilewith your finger, tracing the routewhile Mrs Tilscher chanted the scenery.Tana. Ethiopia. Khartoum. Aswan.That for an hour, then a skittle of milk 5and the chalky Pyramids rubbed into dust.A window opened with a long pole.The laugh of a bell swung by a running child.

This was better than home. Enthralling books.The classroom glowed like a sweet shop. 10Sugar paper. Coloured shapes. Brady and Hindleyfaded, like the faint, uneasy smudge of a mistake.Mrs Tilscher loved you. Some mornings, you foundshe’d left a good gold star by your name.The scent of a pencil slowly, carefully, shaved. 15A xylophone’s nonsense heard from another form.

Over the Easter term, the inky tadpoles changedfrom commas into exclamation marks. Three frogshopped in the playground, freed by a dunce,followed by a line of kids, jumping and croaking 20away from the lunch queue. A rough boytold you how you were born. You kicked him, but staredat your parents, appalled, when you got back home.

That feverish July, the air tasted of electricity.A tangible alarm made you always untidy, hot, 25fractious under the heavy, sexy sky. You asked herhow you were born and Mrs Tilscher smiled,then turned away. Reports were handed out.You ran through the gates, impatient to be grown,as the sky split open into a thunderstorm. 30

Mrs Midas

It was late September. I’d just poured a glass of wine, begunto unwind, while the vegetables cooked. The kitchenfilled with the smell of itself, relaxed, its steamy breathgently blanching the windows. So I opened one, then with my fingers wiped the other’s glass like a brow. 5He was standing under the pear-tree snapping a twig.

Now the garden was long and the visibility poor, the waythe dark of the ground seems to drink the light of the sky,but that twig in his hand was gold. And then he pluckeda pear from a branch, we grew Fondante d’Automne, 10and it sat in his palm like a light-bulb. On.I thought to myself, Is he putting fairy lights in the tree?

He came into the house. The doorknobs gleamed.He drew the blinds. You know the mind; I thought ofthe Field of the Cloth of Gold and of Miss Macready. 15He sat in that chair like a king on a burnished throne.The look on his face was strange, wild, vain; I said,What in the name of God is going on? He started to laugh.

I served up the meal. For starters, corn on the cob.Within seconds he was spitting out the teeth of the rich. 20He toyed with his spoon, then mine, then with the knives, the forks.He asked where was the wine. I poured with a shaking hand,a fragrant, bone-dry white from Italy, then watchedas he picked up the glass, goblet, golden chalice, drank.

It was then that I started to scream. He sank to his knees. 25After we’d both calmed down, I finished the wineon my own, hearing him out. I made him siton the other side of the room and keep his hands to himself.I locked the cat in the cellar. I moved the phone.The toilet I didn’t mind. I couldn’t believe my ears: 30

how he’d had a wish. Look, we all have wishes; granted.But who has wishes granted? Him. Do you know about gold?It feeds no one; aurum, soft, untarnishable; slakesno thirst. He tried to light a cigarette; I gazed, entranced,as the blue flame played on its luteous stem. At least, 35I said, you’ll be able to give up smoking for good.

Separate beds. In fact, I put a chair against my door,near petrified. He was below, turning the spare roominto the tomb of Tutankhamen. You see, we were passionate then,in those halcyon days; unwrapping each other, rapidly, 40like presents, fast food. But now I feared his honeyed embrace,the kiss that would turn my lips to a work of art.

And who, when it comes to the crunch, can livewith a heart of gold? That night, I dreamt I borehis child, its perfect ore limbs, its little tongue 45like a precious latch, its amber eyesholding their pupils like flies. My dream-milkburned in my breasts. I woke to the streaming sun.

So he had to move out. We’d a caravanin the wilds, in a glade of its own. I drove him up 50under cover of dark. He sat in the back.And then I came home, the woman who married the foolwho wished for gold. At first I visited, odd times,parking the car a good way off, then walking.

You knew you were getting close. Golden trout 55on the grass. One day, a hare hung from a larch,a beautiful lemon mistake. And then his footprints,glistening next to the river’s path. He was thin,delirious; hearing, he said, the music of Panfrom the woods. Listen. That was the last straw. 60

What gets me now is not the idiocy or greedbut lack of thought for me. Pure selfishness. I soldthe contents of the house and came down here.I think of him in certain lights, dawn, late afternoon,and once a bowl of apples stopped me dead. I miss most, 65even now, his hands, his warm hands on my skin, his touch.

Selling Manhattan

All yours, Injun, twenty-four bucks’ worth of glass beads,gaudy cloth. I got myself a bargain. I brandishfire-arms and fire-water. Praise the Lord.Now get your red ass out of here.

I wonder if the ground has anything to say.You have made me drunk, drowned outthe world’s slow truth with rapid lies.But today I hear again and plainly see. Whereveryou have touched the earth, the earth is sore. 5

I wonder if the spirit of the water has anythingto say. That you will poison it. That youcan no more own the rivers and the grass than ownthe air. I sing with true love for the land;dawn chant, the song of sunset, starlight psalm. 10

Trust your dreams. No good will come of this.My heart is on the ground, as when my loved onefell back in my arms and died. I have learnedthe solemn laws of joy and sorrow, in the distancebetween morning’s frost and firefly’s flash at night. 15

Man who fears death, how many acres do you needto lengthen your shadow under the endless sky?Last time, this moment, now, a boy feels his freedomvanish, like the salmon going mysteriouslyout to sea. Loss holds the silence of great stones. 20

I will live in the ghost of grasshopper and buffalo.

The evening trembles and is sad.A little shadow runs across the grassand disappears into the darkening pines.

The Virgin Punishing the Infant(after the painting by Max Ernst)

He spoke early. Not the goo goo goo of infancy,but I am God. Joseph kept away, carving himselfa silent Pinocchio out in the workshed. He saidhe was a simple man and hadn’t dreamed of this.

She grew anxious in that second year, would stare 5at stars saying Gabriel? Gabriel? Your guess.The village gossiped in the sun. The child was solitary,his wide and solemn eyes could fill your head.

After he walked, our normal children crawled. Our wiveswere first resentful, then superior. Mary’s child 10would bring her sorrow . . . better far to have a sonwho gurgled nonsense at your breast. Googoo. Googoo.

But I am God. We heard him through the window,heard the smacks which made us peep. What we sawwas commonplace enough. But afterwards, we wondered 15why the infant did not cry. And why the Mother did.

Valentine

Not a red rose or a satin heart.

I give you an onion.It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.It promises lightlike the careful undressing of love. 5

Here.It will blind you with tearslike a lover.It will make your reflectiona wobbling photo of grief. 10

I am trying to be truthful.

Not a cute card or kissogram.

I give you an onion.

Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips,possessive and faithful 15as we are,for as long as we are.

Take it.Its platinum loops shrink to a wedding ring,if you like. 20Lethal.Its scent will cling to your fingers,cling to your knife.

From: Mean Time (1993)