a love returned

Another poem on love, and yet another Carol Ann Duffy classic - this one the closing verse, as taken from the pictured 1999 collection ...

... it cleverly revisits the myth of the Greek Goddess Demeter, and her daughter Persephone, and explores the dark privacy of mourning. The poem though is, ultimately, a wonderful evocation of a love returned and of the power of renewal:


Demeter

Where I lived - winter and hard earth.
I sat in my cold stone room
choosing tough words, granite, flint,

to break the ice. My broken heart -
I tried that, but it skimmed,
flat, over the frozen lake.

She came from a long, long way,
but I saw her at last, walking,
my daughter, my girl, across the fields,

In bare feet, bringing all spring's flowers
to her mother's house. I swear
the air softened and warmed as she moved,

the blue sky smiling, none too soon,
with the small shy mouth of a new moon.

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Carol Ann Duffy (1955 - )

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