The World's Wife

by Carol Ann Duffy

  We lived in the Cathedral grounds.

  The bellringer.

  The hunchback’s wife.

  (The Quasimodos. Have you met them? Gross.)

  And got a life.

  Our neighbours – sullen gargoyles, fallen angels, cowled saints

  who raised their marble hands in greeting

  as I passed along the gravel paths,

  my husband’s supper on a tray beneath a cloth.

  But once,

  one evening in the lady chapel on my own,

  throughout his ringing of the seventh hour,

  I kissed the cold lips of a Queen next to her King.

  Something had changed,

  or never been.

  Soon enough

  he started to find fault.

  Why did I this?

  How could I that?

  Look at myself.

  And in that summer’s dregs,

  I’d see him

  watch the pin-up gypsy

  posing with the tourists in the square;

  then turn his discontented, mulish eye on me

  with no more love than stone.

  I should have known.

  Because it’s better, isn’t it, to be well formed.

  Better to be slim, be slight,

  your slender neck quoted between two thumbs;

  and beautiful, with creamy skin,

  and tumbling auburn hair,

  those devastating eyes;

  and have each lovely foot

  held in a bigger hand

  and kissed;

  then be watched till morning as you sleep,

  so perfect, vulnerable and young

  you hurt his blood.

  And given sanctuary.

  But not betrayed.

  Not driven to an ecstasy of loathing of yourself:

  banging your ugly head against a wall,

  gaping in the mirror at your heavy dugs,

  your thighs of lard,

  your mottled upper arms;

  thumping your belly –

  look at it –

  your wobbling gut.

  You pig. You stupid cow. You fucking buffalo.

  Abortion. Cripple. Spastic. Mongol. Ape.

  Where did it end?

  A ladder. Heavy tools. A steady hand.

  And me, alone all night up there,

  bent on revenge.

  He had pet names for them.

  Marie.

  The belfry trembled when she spoke for him.

  I climbed inside her with my claw-hammer,

  my pliers, my saw, my clamp;

  and, though it took an agonizing hour,

  ripped out her brazen tongue

  and let it fall.

  Then Josephine,

  his second-favourite bell,

  kept open her astonished, golden lips

  and let me in.

  The bells. The bells.

  I made them mute.

  No more arpeggios or scales, no stretti, trills

  for christenings, weddings, great occasions, happy days.

  No more practising

  for bellringers

  on smudgy autumn nights.

  No clarity of sound, divine, articulate,

  to purify the air

  and bow the heads of drinkers in the city bars.

  No single

  solemn

  funeral note

  to answer

  grief.

  I sawed and pulled and hacked.

  I wanted silence back.

  Get this:

  When I was done,

  and bloody to the wrist,

  I squatted down among the murdered music of the bells

  and pissed.

  Medusa

  A suspicion, a doubt, a jealousy

  grew in my mind,

  which turned the hairs on my head to filthy snakes,

  as though my thoughts

  hissed and spat on my scalp.

  My bride’s breath soured, stank

  in the grey bags of my lungs.

  I’m foul mouthed now, foul tongued,

  yellow fanged.

  There are bullet tears in my eyes.

  Are you terrified?

  Be terrified.

  It’s you I love,

  perfect man, Greek God, my own;

  but I know you’ll go, betray me, stray

  from home.

  So better by far for me if you were stone.

  I glanced at a buzzing bee,

  a dull grey pebble fell

  to the ground.

  I glanced at a singing bird,

  a handful of dusty gravel

  spattered down.

  I looked at a ginger cat,

  a housebrick

  shattered a bowl of milk.

  I looked at a snuffling pig,

  a boulder rolled

  in a heap of shit.

  I stared in the mirror.

  Love gone bad

  showed me a Gorgon.

  I stared at a dragon.

  Fire spewed

  from the mouth of a mountain.

  And here you come

  with a shield for a heart

  and a sword for a tongue

  and your girls, your girls.

  Wasn’t I beautiful?

  Wasn’t I fragrant and young?

  Look at me now.

  The Devil’s Wife

  1. DIRT

  The Devil was one of the men at work.

  Different. Fancied himself. Looked at the girls

  in the office as though they were dirt. Didn’t flirt.

  Didn’t speak. Was sarcastic and rude if he did.

  I’d stare him out, chewing my gum, insolent, dumb.

  I’d lie on my bed at home, on fire for him.

  I scowled and pouted and sneered. I gave

  as good as I got till he asked me out. In his car

  he put two fags in his mouth and lit them both.

  He bit my breast. His language was foul. He entered me.

  We’re the same, he said, That’s it. I swooned in my soul.

  We drove to the woods and he made me bury a doll.

  I went mad for the sex. I won’t repeat what we did.

  We gave up going to work. It was either the woods

  or looking at playgrounds, fairgrounds. Coloured lights

  in the rain. I’d walk around on my own. He tailed.

  I felt like this: Tongue of stone. Two black slates

  for eyes. Thumped wound of a mouth. Nobody’s Mam.

  2. MEDUSA

  I flew in my chains over the wood where we’d buried

  the doll. I know it was me who was there.

  I know I carried the spade. I know I was covered in mud.

  But I cannot remember how or when or precisely where.

  Nobody liked my hair. Nobody liked how I spoke.

  He held my heart in his fist and he squeezed it dry.

  I gave the cameras my Medusa stare.

  I heard the judge summing up. I didn’t care.

  I was left to rot. I was locked up, double-locked.

  I know they chucked the key. It was nowt to me.

  I wrote to him every day in our private code.

  I thought in twelve, fifteen, we’d be out on the open road.

  But life, they said, means life. Dying inside.

  The Devil was evil, mad, but I was the Devil’s wife

  which made me worse. I howled in my cell.

  If the Devil was gone then how could this be hell?

  3. BIBLE

  I said No not me I didn’t I couldn’t I wouldn’t.

  Can’t remember no idea not in the room.

  Get me a Bible honestly promise you swear.

  I never not in a million years it was him.

  I said Send me a lawyer a vicar a priest.

  Send me a TV crew send me a journalist.

  Can’t remember not in the room. Send me

  a shrink
where’s my MP send him to me.

  I said Not fair not right not on not true

  not like that. Didn’t see didn’t know didn’t hear.

  Maybe this maybe that not sure not certain maybe.

  Can’t remember no idea it was him it was him.

  Can’t remember no idea not in the room.

  No idea can’t remember not in the room.

  4. NIGHT

  In the long fifty-year night,

  these are the words that crawl out of the wall:

  Suffer. Monster. Burn in Hell.

  When morning comes,

  I will finally tell.

  Amen.

  5. APPEAL

  If I’d been stoned to death

  If I’d been hung by the neck

  If I’d been shaved and strapped to the Chair

  If an injection

  If my peroxide head on the block

  If my outstretched hands for the chop

  If my tongue torn out at the root

  If from ear to ear my throat

  If a bullet a hammer a knife

  If life means life means life means life

  But what did I do to us all, to myself

  When I was the Devil’s wife?

  Circe

  I’m fond, nereids and nymphs, unlike some, of the pig,

  of the tusker, the snout, the boar and the swine.

  One way or another, all pigs have been mine –

  under my thumb, the bristling, salty skin of their backs,

  in my nostrils here, their yobby, porky colognes.

  I’m familiar with hogs and runts, their percussion of oinks

  and grunts, their squeals. I’ve stood with a pail of swill

  at dusk, at the creaky gate of the sty,

  tasting the sweaty, spicy air, the moon

  like a lemon popped in the mouth of the sky.

  But I want to begin with a recipe from abroad

  which uses the cheek – and the tongue in cheek

  at that. Lay two pig’s cheeks, with the tongue,

  in a dish, and strew it well over with salt

  and cloves. Remember the skills of the tongue –

  to lick, to lap, to loosen, lubricate, to lie

  in the soft pouch of the face – and how each pig’s face

  was uniquely itself, as many handsome as plain,

  the cowardly face, the brave, the comical, noble,

  sly or wise, the cruel, the kind, but all of them,

  nymphs, with those piggy eyes. Season with mace.

  Well-cleaned pig’s ears should be blanched, singed, tossed

  in a pot, boiled, kept hot, scraped, served, garnished

  with thyme. Look at that simmering lug, at that ear,

  did it listen, ever, to you, to your prayers and rhymes,

  to the chimes of your voice, singing and clear? Mash

  the potatoes, nymph, open the beer. Now to the brains,

  to the trotters, shoulders, chops, to the sweetmeats slipped

  from the slit, bulging, vulnerable bag of the balls.

  When the heart of a pig has hardened, dice it small.

  Dice it small. I, too, once knelt on this shining shore

  watching the tall ships sail from the burning sun

  like myths; slipped off my dress to wade,

  breast-deep, in the sea, waving and calling;

  then plunged, then swam on my back, looking up

  as three black ships sighed in the shallow waves.

  Of course, I was younger then. And hoping for men. Now,

  let us baste that sizzling pig on the spit once again.

  Mrs Lazarus

  I had grieved. I had wept for a night and a day

  over my loss, ripped the cloth I was married in

  from my breasts, howled, shrieked, clawed

  at the burial stones till my hands bled, retched

  his name over and over again, dead, dead.

  Gone home. Gutted the place. Slept in a single cot,

  widow, one empty glove, white femur

  in the dust, half. Stuffed dark suits

  into black bags, shuffled in a dead man’s shoes,

  noosed the double knot of a tie round my bare neck,

  gaunt nun in the mirror, touching herself. I learnt

  the Stations of Bereavement, the icon of my face

  in each bleak frame; but all those months

  he was going away from me, dwindling

  to the shrunk size of a snapshot, going,

  going. Till his name was no longer a certain spell

  for his face. The last hair on his head

  floated out from a book. His scent went from the house.

  The will was read. See, he was vanishing

  to the small zero held by the gold of my ring.

  Then he was gone. Then he was legend, language;

  my arm on the arm of the schoolteacher – the shock

  of a man’s strength under the sleeve of his coat –

  along the hedgerows. But I was faithful

  for as long as it took. Until he was memory.

  So I could stand that evening in the field

  in a shawl of fine air, healed, able

  to watch the edge of the moon occur to the sky

  and a hare thump from a hedge; then notice

  the village men running towards me, shouting,

  behind them the women and children, barking dogs,

  and I knew. I knew by the sly light

  on the blacksmith’s face, the shrill eyes

  of the barmaid, the sudden hands bearing me

  into the hot tang of the crowd parting before me.

  He lived. I saw the horror on his face.

  I heard his mother’s crazy song. I breathed

  his stench; my bridegroom in his rotting shroud,

  moist and dishevelled from the grave’s slack chew,

  croaking his cuckold name, disinherited, out of his time.

  Pygmalion’s Bride

  Cold, I was, like snow, like ivory.

  I thought He will not touch me,

  but he did.

  He kissed my stone-cool lips.

  I lay still

  as though I’d died.

  He stayed.

  He thumbed my marbled eyes.

  He spoke –

  blunt endearments, what he’d do and how.

  His words were terrible.

  My ears were sculpture,

  stone-deaf, shells.

  I heard the sea.

  I drowned him out.

  I heard him shout.

  He brought me presents, polished pebbles,

  little bells.

  I didn’t blink,

  was dumb.

  He brought me pearls and necklaces and rings.

  He called them girly things.

  He ran his clammy hands along my limbs.

  I didn’t shrink,

  played statue, shtum.

  He let his fingers sink into my flesh,

  he squeezed, he pressed.

  I would not bruise.

  He looked for marks,

  for purple hearts,

  for inky stars, for smudgy clues.

  His nails were claws.

  I showed no scratch, no scrape, no scar.

  He propped me up on pillows,

  jawed all night.

  My heart was ice, was glass.

  His voice was gravel, hoarse.

  He talked white black.

  So I changed tack,

  grew warm, like candle wax,

  kissed back,

  was soft, was pliable,

  began to moan,

  got hot, got wild,

  arched, coiled, writhed,

  begged for his child,

  and at the climax

  screamed my head off –

  all an act.

  And haven’t seen him since.

  Simple as that.

  Mrs Rip Van Winkle

  I s
ank like a stone

  into the still, deep waters of late middle age,

  aching from head to foot.

  I took up food

  and gave up exercise.

  It did me good.

  And while he slept

  I found some hobbies for myself.

  Painting. Seeing the sights I’d always dreamed about:

  The Leaning Tower.

  The Pyramids. The Taj Mahal.

  I made a little watercolour of them all.

  But what was best,

  what hands-down beat the rest,

  was saying a none-too-fond farewell to sex.

  Until the day

  I came home with this pastel of Niagara

  and he was sitting up in bed rattling Viagra.

  Mrs Icarus

  I’m not the first or the last

  to stand on a hillock,

  watching the man she married

  prove to the world

  he’s a total, utter, absolute, Grade A pillock.

  Frau Freud

  Ladies, for argument’s sake, let us say

  that I’ve seen my fair share of ding-a-ling, member and jock,

  of todger and nudger and percy and cock, of tackle,

  of three-for-a-bob, of willy and winky; in fact,

  you could say, I’m as au fait with Hunt-the-Salami

  as Ms M. Lewinsky – equally sick up to here

  with the beef bayonet, the pork sword, the saveloy,

  love-muscle, night-crawler, dong, the dick, prick,

  dipstick and wick, the rammer, the slammer, the rupert,

  the shlong. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve no axe to grind

  with the snake in the trousers, the wife’s best friend,

  the weapon, the python – I suppose what I mean is,

  ladies, dear ladies, the average penis – not pretty . . .

  the squint of its envious solitary eye . . . one’s feeling of pity . . .

  Salome

  I’d done it before

  (and doubtless I’ll do it again,

  sooner or later)

  woke up with a head on the pillow beside me – whose? –

  what did it matter?

  Good-looking, of course, dark hair, rather matted;

  the reddish beard several shades lighter;

  with very deep lines round the eyes,

  from pain, I’d guess, maybe laughter;

  and a beautiful crimson mouth that obviously knew

  how to flatter . . .

  which I kissed . . .

  Colder than pewter.

  Strange. What was his name? Peter?

  Simon? Andrew? John? I knew I’d feel better

  for tea, dry toast, no butter,

  so rang for the maid.

  And, indeed, her innocent clatter