Love, page 1
LOVE
Carol Ann Duffy
Contents
Oppenheim’s Cup and Saucer
Lovebirds
Warming Her Pearls
Two Small Poems of Desire
Girlfriends
Words, Wide Night
Who Loves You
Crush
Adultery
Mean Time
Mrs Beast
White Writing
Grace
River
Absence
The Lovers
New Year
Whatever
Betrothal
Art
Echo
The Female Husband
Rings
Spell
New Vows
Drone
Chaucer’s Valentine
An Unseen
Stone Love
CXVI
Physics
Roundstone
When Then
Oppenheim’s Cup and Saucer
She asked me to luncheon in fur. Far from
the loud laughter of men, our secret life stirred.
I remember her eyes, the slim rope of her spine.
This is your cup, she whispered, and this mine.
We drank the sweet hot liquid and talked dirty.
As she undressed me, her breasts were a mirror
and there were mirrors in the bed. She said Place
your legs around my neck, that’s right. Yes.
1985
Lovebirds
I wait for your step.
A jay on the cherry tree
trembles the blossom.
I name you my love
and the gulls fly above us
calling to the air.
Our two pale bodies
move in the late light, slowly
as doves do, breathing.
And then you are gone.
A night-owl mourns in darkness
for the moon’s last phase.
1985
Warming Her Pearls
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.
1987
Two Small Poems of Desire
1
The little sounds I make against your skin
don’t mean anything. They make me
an animal learning vowels; not that I know
I do this, but I hear them
floating away over your shoulders, sticking
to the ceiling. Aa Ee Iy Oh Uu.
Are they sounds of surprise
at the strange ghosts your nakedness makes
moving above me in how much light
a net can catch?
Who cares. Sometimes language virtuously used
is language badly used. It’s tough
and difficult and true to say
I love you when you do these things to me.
2
The way I prefer to play you back
is naked in the cool lawn of those green sheets,
just afterwards,
and saying What secret am I?
I am brought up sharp in a busy street,
staring inwards as you put down your drink
and touch me again. How does it feel?
It feels like tiny gardens
growing in the palms of the hands,
invisible,
sweet, if they had a scent.
1990
Girlfriends
derived from Verlaine
That hot September night, we slept in a single bed,
naked, and on our frail bodies the sweat
cooled and renewed itself. I reached out my arms
and you, hands on my breasts, kissed me. Evening of amber.
Our nightgowns lay on the floor where you fell to your knees
and became ferocious, pressed your head to my stomach,
your mouth to the red gold, the pink shadows; except
I did not see it like this at the time, but arched
my back and squeezed water from the sultry air
with my fists. Also I remember hearing, clearly
but distantly, a siren some streets away – de
da de da de da – which mingled with my own
absurd cries, so that I looked up, even then,
to see my fingers counting themselves, dancing.
1990
Words, Wide Night
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.
1990
Who Loves You
I worry about you travelling in those mystical machines.
Every day people fall from the clouds, dead.
Breathe in and out and in and out easy.
Safety, safely, safe home.
Your photograph is in the fridge, smiles when the light comes on.
All the time people are burnt in the public places.
Rest where the cool trees drop to a gentle shade.
Safety, safely, safe home.
Don’t lie down on the sands where the hole in the sky is.
Too many people being gnawed to shreds.
Send me your voice however it comes across oceans.
Safety, safely, safe home.
The loveless men and homeless boys are out there and angry.
Nightly people end their lives in the shortcut.
Walk in the light, steadily hurry towards me.
Safety, safely, safe home. (Who loves you?)
Safety, safely, safe home.
1990
Crush
The older she gets,
the more she awakes
with somebody’s face strewn in her head
like petals which once made a flower.
What everyone does
is sit by a desk
and stare at the view, till the time
where they live reappears. Mostly in words.
Imagine a girl
turning to see
love stand by a window, taller,
clever, anointed with sudden light.
Yes, like an angel then,
to be truthful now.
At first a secret, erotic, mute;
today a language she cannot recall.
And we’re all owed joy,
sooner or later.
The trick’s to remember whenever
it was, or to see it coming.
1993
Adultery
Wear dark glasses in the rain.
Regard what was unhurt
as though through a bruise.
Guilt. A sick, green tint.
New gloves, money tucked in the palms,
the handshake crackles. Hands
can do many things. Phone.
Open the wine. Wash themselves. Now
you are naked under your clothes all day,
slim with deceit. Only the once
brings you alone to your knees,
miming, more, more, older and sadder,
creative. Suck a lie with a hole in it
on the way home from a lethal, thrilling night
up against a wall, faster. Language
unpeels to a lost cry. You’re a bastard.
Do it do it do it. Sweet darkness
in the afternoon; a voice in your ear
telling you how you are wanted,
which way, now. A telltale clock
wiping the hours from its face, your face
on a white sheet, gasping, radiant, yes.
Pay for it in cash, fiction, cab-fares back
to the life which crumbles like a wedding-cake.
Paranoia for lunch; too much
to drink, as a hand on your thigh
tilts the restaurant. You know all about love,
don’t you. Turn on your
for a stranger who’s dynamite in bed, again
and again; a slow replay in the kitchen
where the slicing of innocent onions
scalds you to tears. Then, selfish autobiographical sleep
in a marital bed, the tarnished spoon of your body
stirring betrayal, your heart over-ripe at the core.
You’re an expert, darling; your flowers
dumb and explicit on nobody’s birthday.
So write the script – illness and debt,
a ring thrown away in a garden
no moon can heal, your own words
commuting to bile in your mouth, terror –
and all for the same thing twice. And all
for the same thing twice. You did it.
What. Didn’t you. Fuck. Fuck. No. That was
the wrong verb. This is only an abstract noun.
1993
Mean Time
The clocks slid back an hour
and stole light from my life
as I walked through the wrong part of town,
mourning our love.
And, of course, unmendable rain
fell to the bleak streets
where I felt my heart gnaw
at all our mistakes.
If the darkening sky could lift
more than one hour from this day
there are words I would never have said
nor have heard you say.
But we will be dead, as we know,
beyond all light.
These are the shortened days
and the endless nights.
1993
Mrs Beast
These myths going round, these legends, fairytales,
I’ll put them straight; so when you stare
into my face – Helen’s face, Cleopatra’s,
Queen of Sheba’s, Juliet’s – then, deeper,
gaze into my eyes – Nefertiti’s, Mona Lisa’s,
Garbo’s eyes – think again. The Little Mermaid slit
her shining, silver tail in two, rubbed salt
into that stinking wound, got up and walked,
in agony, in fishnet tights, stood up and smiled, waltzed,
all for a Prince, a pretty boy, a charming one
who’d dump her in the end, chuck her, throw her overboard.
I could have told her – look, love, I should know,
they’re bastards when they’re Princes.
What you want to do is find yourself a Beast. The sex
is better. Myself, I came to the House of the Beast
no longer a girl, knowing my own mind,
my own gold stashed in the bank,
my own black horse at the gates
ready to carry me off at one wrong word,
one false move, one dirty look.
But the Beast fell to his knees at the door
to kiss my glove with his mongrel lips – good –
showed by the tears in his bloodshot eyes
that he knew he was blessed – better –
didn’t try to conceal his erection,
size of a mule’s – best. And the Beast
watched me open, decant and quaff
a bottle of Château Margaux ’54,
the year of my birth, before he lifted a paw.
I’ll tell you more. Stripped of his muslin shirt
and his corduroys, he steamed in his pelt,
ugly as sin. He had the grunts, the groans, the yelps,
the breath of a goat. I had the language, girls.
The lady says Do this. Harder. The lady says
Do that. Faster. The lady says That’s not where I meant.
At last it all made sense. The pig in my bed
was invited. And if his snout and trotters fouled
my damask sheets, why, then, he’d wash them. Twice.
Meantime, here was his horrid leather tongue
to scour in between my toes. Here
were his hooked and yellowy claws to pick my nose,
if I wanted that. Or to scratch my back
till it bled. Here was his bullock’s head
to sing off-key all night where I couldn’t hear.
Here was a bit of him like a horse, a ram,
an ape, a wolf, a dog, a donkey, dragon, dinosaur.
Need I say more? On my Poker nights, the Beast
kept out of sight. We were a hard school, tough as fuck,
all of us beautiful and rich – the Woman
who Married a Minotaur, Goldilocks, the Bride
of the Bearded Lesbian, Frau Yellow Dwarf, et Moi.
I watched those wonderful women shuffle and deal –
Five and Seven Card Stud, Sidewinder, Hold ’Em, Draw –
I watched them bet and raise and call. One night,
a head-to-head between Frau Yellow Dwarf and Bearded’s Bride
was over the biggest pot I’d seen in my puff.
The Frau had the Queen of Clubs on the baize
and Bearded the Queen of Spades. Final card. Queen each.
Frau Yellow raised. Bearded raised. Goldilocks’ eyes
were glued to the pot as though porridge bubbled there.
The Minotaur’s wife lit a stinking cheroot. Me,
I noticed the Frau’s hand shook as she placed her chips.
Bearded raised her a final time, then stared,
stared so hard you felt your dress would melt
if she blinked. I held my breath. Frau Yellow
swallowed hard, then called. Sure enough, Bearded flipped
her Aces over; diamonds, hearts, the pubic Ace of Spades.
And that was a lesson learnt by all of us –
the drop-dead gorgeous Bride of the Bearded Lesbian didn’t bluff.
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 dwarfs, 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.
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.
1999
White Writing
No vows written to wed you,
I write them white,
my lips on yours,
light in the soft hours of our married years.
No prayers written to bless you,
I write them white,
your soul a flame,
bright in the window of your maiden name.
No laws written to guard you,
I write them white,
your hand in mine,
palm against palm, lifeline, heartline.
No rules written to guide you,
I write them white,
words on the wind,
traced with a stick where we walk on the sand.
No news written to tell you,
I write it white,
foam on a wave
as we lift up our skirts in the sea, wade,
see last gold sun behind clouds,
inked water in moonlight.
No poems written to praise you,
I write them white.
2002
Grace
Then, like a sudden, easy birth, grace –
rendered as light to the softening earth,
the moon stepping slowly backwards
out of the morning sky, reward
for the dark hours we took to arrive and kneel
at the silver river’s edge near the heron priest,
