Ithaca

And then I returned,
I pulled off my stiff and salty sailor's clothes,
slipped on the dress of the girl I was,
and slid overboard.
A mile from Ithaca, I anchored the boat.

The evening softened and spread,
the turquoise water mentioning its silver fish,
the sky stooping to hear.
My hands moved in the water, moved on the air,
the lover I was, tracing your skin, your hair,

and Ithaca there, the bronze mountains
shouldered like rough shields,
the caves, where dolphins hid,
dark pouches for jewels,
the olive trees ripening theirs tears in our pale fields.

Then I drifted in on a ribbon of light,
tracking the scent of rosemary, lemon, thyme,
the fragrances of your name,
which I chanted again in my heart,
like the charm it was, bringing me back

to Ithaca, all hurt zeroed now
by the harm you could do with a word,
me as a hero plainly absurd,
wading in, waist-high, from the shallow at dusk,
dragging my small white boat.

Carol Ann Duffy in Rapture

Write

Write that the sun bore down on me,
kissing and kissing, and my face
reddened, blackened, whitened to ash,
was blown away by the passionate wind
over the fields, where my body's shape
still flattened the grass, to end s dust
in the eyes of my own ghost.

                                               Or write
that the river held me close in its arms, cold fingers
stroking my limbs, cool tongue probing my mouth,
water's voice swearing its love love love in my ears,
as I drowned in belief.

                             Then write the moon
striding down from the sky in its silver boots
to kick me alive; the stars like a mob of light,
chanting a nama, yours. Write your name in my lips
when I entered the dark church of the wood
like a bride, lay down for my honeymoon,
and write the night, sexy as hell, write the night
pressing and pressing my bones
into the ground.

Carol Ann Duffy in Rapture

The Goldfish

I bought, on a whim, a goldfish for a good girl.
It swam in an antique bowl in the kitchen there,
creative among the lentils and the marmalade,
painting itself over and over, self-portrait in liquid;
learning its letters, O for oxygen, for only.

                                                 It seemed fulfilled;
the halo of its constant swim unrolling a pond
below willow trees, an imperial palace garden
where the poet sat, floating on silence; a mouth opening
to gold: walking towards her, carrying fragrant tea,
her beloved, favourite child.

Carol Ann Duffy in The Bees