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What will you do now with the gift of your left life?Carol Ann Duffy
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The bed we loved in was a spinning world of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seaswhere we would dive for pearls. My lover’s wordswere shooting stars which fell to earth as kisseson these lips; my body now a softer rhymeto his, now echo, assonance; his toucha verb dancing in the centre of a noun. Some nights, I dreamed he’d written me, the beda page beneath his writer’s hands. Romanceand 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 headas he held me upon that next best bed.Carol Ann Duffy
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Love’s language starts, stops, starts; the right words flowing or clotting in the heart.Carol Ann Duffy
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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-bedemanding full-paid menstrual leave twelve weeks per year.Carol Ann Duffy
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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.Carol Ann Duffy
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The bed we loved in was a spinning world of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seaswhere we would dive for pearls. My lover’s wordswere shooting stars which fell to earth as kisseson these lips; my body now a softer rhymeto his, now echo, assonance; his toucha verb dancing in the centre of a noun. Some nights, I dreamed he’d written me, the beda page beneath his writer’s hands. Romanceand 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 headas he held me upon that next bes .Carol Ann Duffy
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But behind each player sttod 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.Carol Ann Duffy
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I'm not the first or the lastto stand on a hillock, watching the man she marriedprove to the worldhe's a total, utter, absolute, Grade A piCarol Ann Duffy
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Words, words were truly alive on the tongue, in the head, warm, beating, frantic, winged; music and blood.Carol Ann Duffy
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I like to use simple words, but in a complicated way.Carol Ann Duffy
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But life, they said, means life. Dying inside. The Devil was evil, mad, but I was the Devil's wifewhich made me worse. I howled in my cell. If the Devil is gone then how could this be hell?Carol Ann Duffy
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For this, let gardens grow, where beelines end, sighing in roses, saffron blooms, buddleia;where bees pray on their knees, sing, praisein pear trees, plum trees; beesare the batteries of orchards, gardens, guard them.Carol Ann Duffy
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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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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 was I 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. .Carol Ann Duffy
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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 was I 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
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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
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I tend the mobile nowlike an injured bird We 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." TextCarol Ann Duffy
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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." NameCarol Ann Duffy
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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
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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 told Give 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
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Poets sing our human music for us.Carol Ann Duffy
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I grew up in a bookless house - my parents didn't read poetry, so if I hadn't had the chance to experience it at school I'd never have experienced it. But I loved English, and I was very lucky in that I had inspirational English teachers, Miss Scriven and Mr. Walker, and they liked us to learn poems by heart, which I found I loved doing.Carol Ann Duffy
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Christmas is taken very seriously in this household. I believe in Father Christmas, and there's no way I'd do anything to undermine that belief.Carol Ann Duffy
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You can find poetry in your everyday life, your memory, in what people say on the bus, in the news, or just what's in your heart.Carol Ann Duffy
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I still read Donne, particularly his love poems.Carol Ann Duffy
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I have piles of poetry books in the bathroom, on the stairs, everywhere. The only way to write poetry is to read it.Carol Ann Duffy
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If I felt, in the event of a royal wedding, inspired to write about people coming together in marriage or civil partnership, I would just be grateful to have an idea for the poem. And if I didn't, I'd ignore it.Carol Ann Duffy