POEM: Vocation by Carol Ann Duffy (from Sincerity; publ, PICADOR, 2018)

[kerk_hiraeth]

 

    Dedicated to elisi for her support, and recs, and for making me look at my writing anew every time. 


      Vocation

       by Carol Ann Duffy

      Published in Sincerity (PICADOR POETRY, 2018)

 

      More my shadow than my shadow,

      it is mute, as it must be.

      I walk it along the world's wide road,

      chanting its reticence; what I think it might say

      if it could, or wished to.

 

      If it snags on the hedgerow,

      a nest is a choir I could hold on a glove.

 

      In love, its surface shines like ink;

      I dip my pen again.

 

      But it hoards grief, sometimes for years.

 

 

      So I am supplicant; alert at the lip

      of wordlessness, how can I tell?

      Or it circles me, a sundial's slow arrow,

      patient, waiting to cover my face

      with its scrap of black silk.

 

      Though should it stand still in the lane,

      even the empty chapel speaks in chimes.

 

      I have known it;difficult, accessible.

      It is the taste of imminent weather.

 

      If its eyes smell onions, I shall weep anon.

 

        




    Goddess watch over you all, 

     To elisi, 

        Sometimes I get glimpses of what you see when I write, 
        and for those brief moments I can only thank you, 
           if only inadequately. 


    kerk hiraeth 

Comments

[elisi]

Your poem is more meaningful than the one you posted! 🫶🫶🫶🫶🫶

Thank you so much for the poem(s) and for continuing to share your writings.