A love returned

Here's Carol Ann Duffy's closing poem, taken from the pictured 1999 collection ...

... it revisits the myth of the Greek Goddess Demeter, and her daughter Persephone, and explores the isolating privacy of mourning.

Such a wonderful evocation of a love returned, and 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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