The World's Wife

by Professor Carol Ann Duffy DBE

that I sang,

till I felt the squeeze of his fist.

Coiled in my charmer’s lap, I felt the grasp of his strangler’s clasp at my nape.

But my gold eye saw the guy in the grass with the gun. Twelve-bore.

Over the waves the fisherman came with his hook and his line and his sinker.

The taxidermist sharpened his knives.

And then I came home, the woman who married the fool who wished for gold.

What gets me now is not the idiocy or greed but lack of thought for me. Pure selfishness.

That’s him pushing the stone up the hill, the jerk.

my smile to a twisted smirk; while, up on the deepening murk of the hill, he is giving one hundred per cent and more to his work.

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.

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.

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?

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.

I thought He will not touch me, but he did.

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.

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.

It suited me down to the ground.

And given my time all over again, rest assured that I’d rather speak for myself

In fact, girls, I’d rather be dead. But the Gods are like publishers, usually male, and what you doubtless know of my tale is the deal.

Orpheus strutted his stuff.

did everything in my power to make him look back. What did I have to do, I said, to make him see we were through?

At first, I looked along the road hoping to see him saunter home

disturb my peace,

wore a widow’s face,

when I heard a far-too-late familiar tread outside the door. I licked my scarlet thread and aimed it surely at the middle of the needle’s eye once more.

The way I wanted to do that was to find a female perspective on the character, and I did that by finding a personal connection

I didn’t want every woman in the book to be better than the men. That wasn’t my agenda, so I wanted to look at unpleasant aspects of being female as well as look at ways of being male.