Collected Poems
Collected Poems
CAROL ANN DUFFY
PICADOR
Contents
Standing Female Nude
Selling Manhattan
The Other Country
Mean Time
The World’s Wife
Feminine Gospels
Rapture
The Bees
Ritual Lighting
Christmas Poems
Index of titles
Index of first lines
For Ella
Lineage
Child, stardust, small wonder
you look up tonight
to wish on old light.
I sense my mother’s spirit
in the room. Time
has made her a prayer for us.
A wish and a prayer at Christmas
and you either or both.
I hoped for nothing more.
The ancient law:
the mass cannot be sung
without the wax
because the lineage of bees
is from Paradise.
Girl Talking
On our Eid day my cousin was sent to
the village. Something happened. We think it was pain.
She gave wheat to the miller and the miller
gave her flour. Afterwards it did not hurt,
so for a while she made chapatis. Tasleen,
said her friends, Tasleen, do come out with us.
They were in a coy near the swing. It’s like
a field. Sometimes we planted melons, spinach,
marrow, and there was a well. She sat on the swing.
They pushed her till she shouted Stop the swing,
then she was sick. Tasleen told them to find
help. She made blood beneath the mango tree.
Her mother held her down. She thought something
was burning her stomach. We paint our hands.
We visit. We take each other money.
Outside, the children played Jack-with-Five-Stones.
Each day she’d carried water from the well
into the Mosque. Men washed and prayed to God.
After an hour she died. Her mother cried.
They called a Holy Man. He walked from Dina
to Jhang Chak. He saw her dead, then said
She went out at noon and the ghost took her heart.
From that day we were warned not to do this.
Baarh is a small red fruit. We guard our hearts.
Comprehensive
Tutumantu is like hopscotch, Kwani-kwani is like hide-and-seek.
When my sister came back to Africa she could only speak
English. Sometimes we fought in bed because she didn’t know
what I was saying. I like Africa better than England.
My mother says You will like it when we get our own house.
We talk a lot about the things we used to do
in Africa and then we are happy.
Wayne. Fourteen. Games are for kids. I support
the National Front. Paki-bashing and pulling girls’
knickers down. Dad’s got his own mini-cab. We watch
the video. I Spit on Your Grave. Brilliant.
I don’t suppose I’ll get a job. It’s all them
coming over here to work. Arsenal.
Masjid at 6 o’clock. School at 8. There was
a friendly shop selling rice. They ground it at home
to make the evening nan. Families face Mecca.
There was much more room to play than here in London.
We played in an old village. It is empty now.
We got a plane to Heathrow. People wrote to us
that everything was easy here.
It’s boring. Get engaged. Probably work in Safeways
worst luck. I haven’t lost it yet because I want
respect. Marlon Frederic’s nice but he’s a bit dark.
I like Madness. The lead singer’s dead good.
My mum is bad with her nerves. She won’t
let me do nothing. Michelle. It’s just boring.
Ejaz. They put some sausages on my plate.
As I was going to put one in my mouth
a Moslem boy jumped on me and pulled.
The plate dropped on the floor and broke. He asked me in Urdu
if I was a Moslem. I said Yes. You shouldn’t be eating this.
It’s a pig’s meat. So we became friends.
My sister went out with one. There was murder.
I’d like to be mates, but they’re different from us.
Some of them wear turbans in class. You can’t help
taking the piss. I’m going in the Army.
No choice really. When I get married
I might emigrate. A girl who can cook
with long legs. Australia sounds all right.
Some of my family are named after the Moghul emperors.
Aurangzeb, Jehangir, Batur, Humayun. I was born
thirteen years ago in Jhelum. This is a hard school.
A man came in with a milk crate. The teacher told us
to drink our milk. I didn’t understand what she was saying,
so I didn’t go to get any milk. I have hope and am ambitious.
At first I felt as if I was dreaming, but I wasn’t.
Everything I saw was true.
Alphabet for Auden
When the words have gone away
there is nothing left to say.
Unformed thought can never be,
what you feel is what you see,
write it down and set it free
on printed pages, © Me.
I love, you love, so does he –
long live English Poetry.
Four o’clock is time for tea,
I’ll be Mother, who’ll be me?
Murmur, underneath your breath,
incantations to the deaf.
Here we go again. Goody.
Art can’t alter History.
Praise the language, treasure each
well-earned phrase your labours reach.
In hotels you sit and sigh,
crafting lines where others cry,
puzzled why it doesn’t pay
shoving couplets round all day.
There is vodka on a tray.
Up your nose the hairs are grey.
When the words done gone it’s hell
having nothing left to tell.
Pummel, punch, fondle, knead them
back again to life. Read them
when you doubt yourself and when
you doubt their function, read again.
Verse can say I told you so
but cannot sway the status quo
one inch. Now you get lonely,
Baby want love and love only.
In the mirror you see you.
Love you always, darling. True.
When the words have wandered far
poets patronise the bar,
understanding less and less.
Truth is anybody’s guess
and Time’s a clock, five of three,
mix another G and T.
Set ’em up, Joe, make that two.
Wallace Stevens thought in blue.
Words drown in a drunken sea,
dumb, they clutch at memory.
Pissed you have a double view,
something else to trouble you.
Inspiration clears the decks –
if all else fails, write of sex.
Every other word’s a lie,
ain’t no rainbow in the sky.
Some get lucky, die in bed,
one word stubbed in the ashtray. Dead.
Head of English
Today we have a poet in the class.
A real live poet with a published book.
Notice the inkstained fingers girls. Perhaps
we’re going to witness verse hot from the press.
Who knows. Please show your appreciation
by clapping. Not too loud. Now
sit up straight and listen. Remember
the lesson on assonance, for not all poems,
sadly, rhyme these days. Still. Never mind.
Whispering’s, as always, out of bounds –
but do feel free to raise some questions.
After all, we’re paying forty pounds.
Those of you with English Second Language
see me after break. We’re fortunate
to have this person in our midst.
Season 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
want winds of change about the place.
Take notes, but don’t write reams. Just an essay
on 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
that gave an insight to an outside view.
Applause will do. Thank you
very much for coming here today. Lunch
in the hall? Do hang about. Unfortunately
I have to dash. Tracey will show you out.
Lizzie, Six
What are you doing?
I’m watching the moon.
I’ll give you the moon
when I get up there.
Where are you going? r />
To play in the fields.
I’ll give you fields,
bend over that chair.
What are you thinking?
I’m thinking of love.
I’ll give you love
when I’ve climbed this stair.
Where are you hiding?
Deep in the wood.
I’ll give you wood
when your bottom’s bare.
Why are you crying?
I’m afraid of the dark.
I’ll give you the dark
and I do not care.
Ash Wednesday, 1984
In St Austin’s and Sacré Coeur the accents of ignorance
sing out. The Catholic’s spanking wains are marked
by a bigot’s thumbprint dipped in burnt black palm.
Dead language rises up and does them harm.
I remember this. The giving up of gobstoppers
for Lent, the weekly invention of venial sin
in a dusty box. Once, in pale blue dresses,
we kissed petals for the Bishop’s feet.
Stafford’s guilty sinners slobbered at their beads, beneath
the purple-shrouded plaster saints. We were Scottish,
moved down there for work, and every Sunday
I was leathered up the road to Church.
Get to Communion and none of your cheek.
We’ll put the fear of God in your bones.
Swallow the Eucharist, humble and meek.
St Stephen was martyred with stones.
It makes me sick. My soul is not a vest
spattered with wee black marks. Miracles and shamrocks
and transubstantiation are all my ass.
For Christ’s sake, do not send your kids to Mass.
Education for Leisure
Today I am going to kill something. Anything.
I have had enough of being ignored and today
I am going to play God. It is an ordinary day,
a sort of grey with boredom stirring in the streets.
I squash a fly against the window with my thumb.
We did that at school. Shakespeare. It was in
another language and now the fly is in another language.
I breathe out talent on the glass to write my name.
I am a genius. I could be anything at all, with half
the chance. But today I am going to change the world.
Something’s world. The cat avoids me. The cat
knows I am a genius and has hidden itself.
I pour the goldfish down the bog. I pull the chain.
I see that it is good. The budgie is panicking.
Once a fortnight, I walk the two miles into town
for signing on. They don’t appreciate my autograph.
There is nothing left to kill. I dial the radio
and tell the man he’s talking to a superstar.
He cuts me off. I get our bread-knife and go out.
The pavements glitter suddenly. I touch your arm.
I Remember Me
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 make 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
This Shape
derived from a poem by Jean Genet
This shape is a rose, protect it, it’s pure.
Preserve it. Already the evening unfolds you
before me. Naked, entwined, standing
in a sheet against a wall. This shape.
My lips tremble on its delicate brim
and dare to gather the drops which fall.
Your milk swells my throat to the neck of a dove.
O stay. Rose with pearl petals, remain.
Thorny sea-fruits tear my skin. Your image
at night’s end. Fingertips of smoke break surface.
My tongue thrusts, drinks at the rose’s edge.
My heart uncertain. Golden hair, ghostly nape.
Destroy this anchor to impossible living, vomiting
on a sea of bile. Harnessed to your body
I move through a vast world without goodness
where you come to me only in sleep.
I roll on the ocean with you vaguely above,
working the axles, twisting through your storms.
Faraway and angry. Wanting the sky
to thread the horizon with a cloth of my stitching.
How can I sleep with this flesh that uncurls the sea?
Beautiful story of love. A village child
adores the sentry wandering on the beach.
My amber hand draws in a boy of iron.
Sleeper, your body. This shape, extraordinary.
Creamy almond, star, o curled up child.
A tingling stir of blood in the blue departure
of evening. A naked foot sounding on the grass.
Saying Something
Things assume your shape; discarded clothes, a damp shroud
in the bathroom, vacant hands. This is not fiction. This is
the plain and warm material of love. My heart assumes it.
We wake. Our private language starts the day. We make
familiar movements through the house. The dreams we have
no phrases for slip through our fingers into smoke.
I dreamed I was not with you. Wandering in a city
where you did not live, I stared at strangers, searching
for a word to make them you. I woke beside you.
Sweetheart, I say. Pedestrian daylight terms scratch
darker surfaces. Your absence leaves me with the ghost
of love; half-warm coffee cups or sheets, the gentlest kiss.
Walking home, I see you turning on the lights. I come in
from outside calling your name, saying something.
Jealous as Hell
Blind black shark swim in me,
move to possess. Slow stupid shape
grin in sea, suck inky on suspicions.
Swim grin suck, it clot my heart.
Big fish brooding in the water.
Bright bird buoyant in the sky.
Tail-shudder thrust wounded, it
ugly from imaginary pains. Bones
of contention rot in gut. Mouth open
shut open shut open. Hateshark coming.
Big fish smoulder for the slaughter.
Clever wings fly small bird high.
Evilbreath lurk at base of spine,
seethe sightless from heart to mind.
Devilteeth, sack of greed, reasonless.
It will kill. Swim grin suck.
Bird skim surface of the ocean.
Fish churn clumsy in the sea.
It wait in the gurgling dark.
Bad shark. Blue belly blubber
wanting bird. Sick with lust
it flick its great tail, it flick.
Freedom bird glide in its own motion.
Shark need nothing to be free.
It watch you every move.
Terza Rima SW19
Over this Common a kestrel treads air
till the earth says mouse or vole. Far below
two lovers walking by the pond seem unaware.
She feeds the ducks. He wants her, tells her so
as she half-smiles and stands slightly apart.
He loves me, loves me not with each deft throw.
It could last a year, she thinks, possibly two
and then crumble like stale bread. The kestrel flies
across the sun as he swears his love is true
and, darling, forever. Suddenly the earth cries
Now and death drops from above like a stone.
A couple turn and see a strange bird rise.
Into the sky a kestrel climbs alone
and later she might write or he may phone.
Naming Parts
A body has been discussed between them.
The woman wears a bruise
upon her arm. Do not wear your heart
upon your sleeve, he cautions, knowing
which part of whom has caused the injury.
Underneath the lamplight you teach me new games
with a wicked pack of cards. I am