Yippee! Here’s a glorious poem from our NEW POET LAUREATE. Welcome Ms Carol Ann Duffy.
This is from the collection SELLING MANHATTAN 1987
COLOURS BY SOMEONE ELSE
Sweetheart, this evening your smell is all around Down by the fishing-boats, the sky trembling
above the pier. Your tears have dried on my palms. Darling, we should never have done that.
You made me your own, painted my face into smithereens. Who can say where my tongue
has been in your dark boudoir? Soft heelprints on my shoulder, sound of the hummingbird breathing its last.
Regret is in the air. Dante Gabriel Rossetti saved his poems from her worms. Long hours
turning the rain to whisky. Weeping spectacles. The landlord sees me mine Sinatra at the bar.
Sweetheart, are you listening? Pay heed for I am insane on the underground, burning
the crossword with my eyes. I owe money to a bowler hat, keep a brick from London Bridge
under the bed. We are drowning twice nightly in rivers of silk. This is the year of the tiger.
Hush. There is no end to my love for you, for I have eaten the owl’s egg, endured the sharpening of spoons.
When you see me in my uniform, act unconcerned. The pin and the pomegranate will suffice to show
the workings of my mind. I am up to my eyes in onions Sweetheart. Undress and read this.
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