Carol Ann Duffy

In the end,
it was nothing more
than the toy boat of a boy
on the local park’s lake,

Now only words in a rhyme,
no more than a name
on a stone,
and that well overgrown –

The heron’s the look of the river.
The moon’s the look of the night.
The sky’s the look of forever.
Snow is the look of white.

If I was dead,
and my bones adrift
like dropped oars
in the deep, turning earth;

Every summer, I visit the Scottish Prince
at his castle high on a hill outside Crieff.
We dine on haggis and tatties and neeps –
I drink water with mine and the Prince sips

One with a broken heart
to weep sad buckets.
Two with four blue eyes
to mirror the sea.

You like safe sounds:
the dogs lapping at their bowls;
the pop of a cork on a bottle of plonk
as your mother cooks;

A clip of thinder ever the reeftips
sends like a bimb going iff!
My hurt thimps in my chist.
It’s dirk. The clods are block with reen.

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.

Not a red rose or a satin heart.
I give you an onion.
It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.
It promises light

We came from our own country in a red room
which fell through the fields, our mother singing
our father’s name to the turn of the wheels.
My brothers cried, one of them bawling, Home,

It was late September. I’d 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,