This scene is imagined by Carol Ann Duffy in a beautiful poem, ‘Demeter’. Her goddess lives in ‘winter and hard earth’ unable to break the ice that surrounds her.22 She even tries using her broken heart, ‘but it skimmed, / flat, over the frozen lake.’ It is not just Demeter’s room that is cold stone, but her heart too. She sees her daughter coming ‘across the fields, / in bare feet, bringing all spring’s flowers / to her mother’s house.’ Persephone brings the thaw, and so Demeter answers her with a rush of new life. ‘I swear / the air softened and warmed as she moved,’ she says.
