Duffy - The World’s Wife : Poems

The Worlds WifeCAROL ANN DUFFY PICADOR for May and Jackie and Ellawith loveContents Little Red-Cap At childhoods end, the houses petered out into playing fields, the factory, allotments kept, like mistresses, by kneeling married men, the silent railway line, the hermits 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 ears he 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. Poetry. Poetry.

The wolf, I knew, would lead me deep into the woods, away from home, to a dark tangled thorny place lit by the eyes of owls. I crawled in his wake, my stockings ripped to shreds, scraps of red from my blazer snagged on twig and branch, murder clues. I lost both shoes but got there, wolfs 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, for what little girl doesnt dearly love a wolf? Then I slid from between his heavy matted paws and went in search of a living bird white dove which flew, straight, from my hands to his open mouth. One bite, dead.

How nice, breakfast in bed, he said, licking his chops. As soon as he slept, I crept to the back of 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 mushroom stoppers the mouth of a buried corpse, that birds are the uttered thought of trees, that a greying wolf howls the same old song at the moon, year in, year out, season after season, same rhyme, same reason. I took an axe to a willow to see how it wept. I took an axe to a salmon to see how it leapt.

I took an axe to the wolf as he slept, one chop, scrotum to throat, and saw the glistening, virgin white of my grandmothers bones. I filled his old belly with stones. I stitched him up. Out of the forest I come with my flowers, singing, all alone. Thetis I shrank myself to the size of a bird in the hand of a man. Sweet, sweet, was the small song that I sang, till I felt the squeeze of his fist.

Then I did this: shouldered the cross of an albatross up the hill of the sky. Why? To follow a ship. But I felt my wings clipped by the squint of a crossbows eye. So I shopped for a suitable shape. Size 8. Snake.

Big Mistake. Coiled in my charmers lap, I felt the grasp of his stranglers clasp at my nape. Next I was roar, claw, 50 lb paw, jungle-floored, meateater, raw, a zebras gore in my lower jaw. But my gold eye saw the guy in the grass with the gun. Twelve-bore. I sank through the floor of the earth to swim in the sea.

Mermaid, me, big fish, eel, dolphin, whale, the oceans opera singer. Over the waves the fisherman came with his hook and his line and his sinker. I changed my tune to racoon, skunk, stoat, to weasel, ferret, bat, mink, rat. The taxidermist sharpened his knives. I smelled the stink of formaldehyde. Stuff that.

I was wind, I was gas, I was all hot air, trailed clouds for hair. I scrawled my name with a hurricane, when out of the blue roared a fighter plane. Then my tongue was flame and my kisses burned, but the groom wore asbestos. So I changed, I learned, turned inside out or thats how it felt when the child burst out. Queen Herod Ice in the trees. Three Queens at the Palace gates, dressed in furs, accented; their several sweating, panting beasts, laden for a long, hard trek, following the guide and boy to the stables; courteous, confident; oh, and with gifts for the King and Queen of here Herod, me in exchange for sunken baths, curtained beds, fruit, the best of meat and wine, dancers, music, talk as it turned out to be, with everyone fast asleep, save me, those vivid three till bitter dawn.

They were wise. Older than I. They knew what they knew. Once drunken Herods head went back, they asked to see her, fast asleep in her crib, my little child. Silver and gold, the loose change of herself, glowed in the soft bowl of her face. Strength, said the Queen with the hennaed hands. Strength, said the Queen with the hennaed hands.

The black Queen made a tiny starfish of my daughters fist, said Happiness; then stared at me, Queen to Queen, with insolent lust. Watch, they said, for a star in the Easta new starpierced through the night like a nail.It means hes here, alive, new-born. Who? Him. The Husband. Hero. Hunk.The Boy Next Door. The Paramour.

The Je tadore. The Marrying Kind. Adulterer. Bigamist.The Wolf. The Rip. The Rake.

The Rat.The Heartbreaker. The Ladykiller. Mr Right. My baby stirred, suckled the empty air for milk, till I knelt and the black Queen scooped out my breast, the left, guiding it down to the infants mouth. No man, I swore, will make her shed one tear. A peacock screamed outside. Afterwards, it seemed like a dream.

The pungent camels kneeling in the snow, the guides rough shout as he clapped his leather gloves, hawked, spat, snatched the smoky jug of mead from the chittering maid she was twelve, thirteen. I watched each turbaned Queen rise like a god on the back of her beast. And splayed that night below Herods fusty bulk, I saw the fierce eyes of the black Queen flash again, felt her urgent warnings scald my ear. Watch for a star, a star. It means hes here... Some swaggering lad to break her heart, some wincing Prince to take her name away and give a ring, a nothing, nowt in gold.

I sent for the Chief of Staff, a mountain man with a red scar, like a tick to the mean stare of his eye. Take men and horses, knives, swords, cutlasses.Ride East from hereand kill each mothers son.Do it. Spare not one. The midnight hour. The chattering stars shivered in a nervous sky. Orion to the South who knew the score, whod seen, not seen, then seen it all before; the yapping Dog Star at his heels.

High up in the West a studded, diamond W. And then, as prophesied, blatant, brazen, buoyant in the East and blue The Boyfriends Star. We do our best, we Queens, we mothers, mothers of Queens. We wade through blood for our sleeping girls. We have daggers for eyes. Behind our lullabies, the hooves of terrible horses thunder and drum.

Mrs Midas It was late September. Id just poured a glass of wine, begun to unwind, while the vegetables cooked. The kitchen filled with the smell of itself, relaxed, its steamy breath gently blanching the windows. So I opened one, then with my fingers wiped the others glass like a brow. He was standing under the pear tree snapping a twig. Now the garden was long and the visibility poor, the way the dark of the ground seems to drink the light of the sky, but that twig in his hand was gold.

And then he plucked a pear from a branch we grew Fondante dAutomne and 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 of the Field of the Cloth of Gold and of Miss Macready.

He 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.