Poetry

Before You Were Mine12I'm ten years away from the corner you laugh on3with your pals, Maggie McGeeney and Jean Duff.4The three of you bend from the waist, holding5each other, or your knees, and shriek at the pavement.6Your polka-dot dress blows round your legs. Marilyn.78I'm not here yet. The thought of me doesn't occur9in the ballroom with the thousand eyes, the fizzy, movie tomorrows 10the right walk home could bring. I knew you would dance11like that. Before you were mine, your Ma stands at the close12with a hiding for the late one. You reckon it's worth it.1314The decade ahead of my loud, possessive yell was the best one, eh?15I remember my hands in those high-heeled red shoes, relics,16and now your ghost clatters toward me over George Square17till I see you, clear as scent, under the tree,18with its lights, and whose small bites on your neck, sweetheart?1920Cha cha cha! You'd teach me the steps on the way home from Mass, 21stamping stars from the wrong pavement. Even then22I wanted the bold girl winking in Portobello, somewhere23in Scotland, before I was born. That glamorous love lasts24where you sparkle and waltz and laugh before you were mine.252627by Carol Ann Duffy2829Afternoons1Summer is fading:2The leaves fall in ones and twos 3From trees bordering4The new recreation ground.5In the hollows of afternoons6Young mothers assemble7At swing and sandpit8Setting free their children.9Behind them, at intervals,10Stand husbands in skilled trades, 11An estateful of washing,12And the albums, lettered13Our Wedding, lying14Near the television:15Before them, the wind16Is ruining their courting-places 17That are still courting-places18(But the lovers are all in school), 19And their children, so intent on 20Finding more unripe acorns,21Expect to be taken home.22Their beauty has thickened.23Something is pushing them24To the side of their own lives.252627by Philip Larkin2829Follower12My father worked with a horse-plough,3His shoulders globed like a full sail strung 4Between the shafts and the furrow.5The horses strained at his clicking tongue. 67An expert. He would set the wing8And fit the bright-pointed sock.9The sod rolled over without breaking.10At the headrig, with a single pluck1112Of reins, the sweating team turned round 13And back into the land. His eye14Narrowed and angled at the ground,15Mapping the furrow exactly.1617I stumbled in his hobnailed wake,18Fell sometimes on the polished sod;19Sometimes he rode me on his back20Dipping and rising to his plod.2122I wanted to grow up and plough,23To close one eye, stiffen my arm.24All I ever did was follow25In his broad shadow round the farm.2627I was a nuisance, tripping, falling,28Yapping always. But today29It is my father who keeps stumbling30Behind me, and will not go away.3132by Seamus Heaney33Cold Knap Lake12We once watched a crowd3pull a drowned child from the lake.4Blue-lipped and dressed in water's long green silk 5she lay for dead.67Then kneeling on the earth,8a heroine, her red head bowed,9her wartime cotton frock soaked,10my mother gave a stranger's child her breath.11The crowd stood silent,12drawn by the dread of it.1314The child breathed, bleating15and rosy in my mother's hands.16My father took her home to a poor house17and watched her thrashed for almost drowning.1819Was I there?20Or is that troubled surface something else21shadowy under the dipped fingers of willows22where satiny mud blooms in cloudiness23after the treading, heavy webs of swans24as their wings beat and whistle on the air?25All lost things lie under closing water26in that lake with the poor man's daughter272829by Gillian Clarke30。