The World's Wife

Little Red-Cap
At childhood’s end, the houses petered out
into playing fields, the factory, allotments
kept, like mistresses, by kneeling married men,
the silent railway line, the hermit’s caravan,
till you came at last to the edge of the woods.
It was there that I first clapped eyes on the
wolf.

He stood in a clearing, reading his verse out
loud
in his wolfy drawl, a paperback in his hairy
paw,
red wine staining his bearded jaw. What big
ears
he had! What big eyes he had! What teeth!
In the interval, I made quite sure he spotted
me,
sweet sixteen, never been, babe, waif, and
bought me a drink,

my first. You might ask why. Here’s why. Poetry.
The wolf, I knew, would lead me deep into the
woods,
away from home, to a dark tangled thorny
place
lit by the eyes of owls. I crawled in his wake,
my stockings ripped to shreds, scraps of red
from my blazer
snagged on twig and branch, murder clues.
I lost both shoes

but got there, wolf’s lair, better beware.
Lesson one that night,
breath of the wolf in my ear, was the love
poem.
I clung till dawn to his thrashing fur, for
what little girl doesn’t dearly love a wolf?
Then I slid from between his heavy matted
paws
and went in search of a living bird – white
dove –

which flew, straight, from my hands to his
open mouth.
One bite, dead. How nice, breakfast in bed,
he said,
licking his chops. As soon as he slept, I crept to
the back
of the lair, where a whole wall was crimson,
gold, aglow with books.
Words, words were truly alive on the tongue,
in the head,
warm, beating, frantic, winged; music and
blood.

But then I was young – and it took ten years
in the woods to tell that a mushroom
stoppers the mouth of a buried corpse, that
birds
are the uttered thought of trees, that a
greying wolf
howls the same old song at the moon, year in,
year out,
season after season, same rhyme, same
reason. I took an axe

to a willow to see how it wept. I took an axe to
a salmon
to see how it leapt. I took an axe to the wolf
as he slept, one chop, scrotum to throat, and
saw
the glistening, virgin white of my
grandmother’s bones.
I filled his old belly with stones. I stitched
him up.
Out of the forest I come with my flowers,
singing, all alone.

Pilate’s Wife
Firstly, his hands — a woman’s. Softer than
mine,
with pearly nails, like shells from Galilee.
Indolent hands. Camp hands that clapped for
grapes.
Their pale, mothy touch made me flinch.
Pontius.

I longed for Rome, home, someone else.
When the Nazarene
entered Jerusalem, my maid and I crept out,
bored stiff, disguised, and joined the frenzied
crowd.
I tripped, clutched the bridle of an ass, looked
up

and there he was. His face? Ugly. Talented.
He looked at me. I mean he looked at me. My
God.
His eyes were eyes to die for. Then he was
gone,
his rough men shouldering a pathway to the
gates.

The night before his trial, I dreamt of him.
His brown hands touched me. Then it hurt.
Then blood. I saw that each tough palm was
skewered
by a nail. I woke up, sweating, sexual,
terrified.

Leave him alone. I sent a warning note, then
quickly dressed.
When I arrived, the Nazarene was crowned
with thorns.
The crowd was baying for Barabbas. Pilate
saw me,
looked away, then carefully turned up his
sleeves

and slowly washed his useless, perfumed
hands.
They seized the prophet then and dragged
him out,
up to the Place of Skulls. My maid knows all
the rest.
Was he God? Of course not. Pilate believed
he was.

Mrs Aesop
By Christ, he could bore for Purgatory. He was
small
didn’t prepossess. So he tried to impress.
Dead men,
Mrs Aesop, he’d say, tell no tales. Well, let me
tell you now
that the bird in his hand shat on his sleeve,
never mind the two worth less in the bush.
Tedious.

Going out was worst. He’d stand at our gate,
look, then leap;
scour the hedgerows for a shy mouse, the
fields
for a sly fox, the sky for one particular
swallow
that couldn’t make a summer. The jackdaw,
according to him,
envied the eagle. Donkeys, would, on the
whole, prefer to be lions.

On one appalling evening stroll, we passed
an old hare
snoozing in a ditch – he stopped and made a
note – and then,
about a mile further on, a tortoise,
somebody’s pet,
creeping, slow as marriage, up the road. Slow but certain, Mrs Aesop, wins the race.
Asshole.

What race? What sour grapes? What silk
purse,
sow’s ear, dog in a manger, what big fish?
Some days
I could barely keep awake as the story
droned on
towards the moral of itself. Action, Mrs A,
speaks louder
than words. And that’s another thing, the sex

was diabolical. I gave him a fable one night
about a little cock that wouldn’t crow, a razor-
sharp axe
with a heart blacker than the pot that called
the kettle.
I’ll cut off your tail, all right, I said, to save my
face.
That shut him up. I laughed last, longest.

Queen Herod
Ice in the trees.
Three Queens at the Palace gates,
dressed in furs, accented;
their several sweating, panting beasts
laden for a long hard trek,
following the guide and boy to the stables;
courteous, confident; oh, and with gifts
for the King and Queen of here – Herod, me –
in exchange for sunken baths, curtained beds,
fruit, the best of meat and wine,
dancers, music, talk –
as it turned out to be,
with everyone fast asleep, save me,
those vivid three –
till bitter dawn.

They were wise. Older than I.
They knew what they knew.
Once drunken Herod’s head went back,
they asked to see her,
fast asleep in her crib,
my little child.
Silver and gold,
the loose change of herself,
glowed in the soft bowl of her face.
Grace, said the tallest Queen.
Strength, said the Queen with the hennaed
hands.
The black Queen
made a tiny starfish of my daughter’s fist,
said Happiness; then stared at me,
Queen to Queen, with insolent lust.

Watch, they said, for a star in the east –
a new star
pierced through the night like a nail.
It means he’s here, alive, newborn.
Who? Him. The Husband. Hero. Hunk.
The Boy Next Door. The Paramour. The
Je t’adore.
The Marrying Kind. Adulterer. Bigamist.
The Wolf. The Rip. The Rake. The Rat.
The Heartbreaker. The Ladykiller. Mr Right.

My baby stirred,
suckled the empty air for milk,
till I knelt
and the black Queen scooped out my breast,
the left, guiding it down
to the infant’s mouth.
No man, I swore,
will make her shed one tear.
A peacock screamed outside.

Afterwards, it seemed like a dream.
I saw the fierce eyes of the black Queen
flash again, felt her urgent warnings scald
my ear. Watch for a star, a star.
It means he’s here …

Some swaggering lad to break her heart,
some wincing Prince to take her name away
and give a ring, a nothing, a nought in gold.
I sent for the Chief of Staff,
a mountain man
with a red scar, like a tick
to the mean stare of his eye.
Take men and horses,
knives, swords, cutlasses.
Ride East from here
and kill each mother’s son.
Do it. Spare not one.

The midnight hour. The chattering stars
shivered in a nervous sky.
Orion to the South
who knew the score, who’d seen,
not seen, then seen it all before;
the yapping Dog Star at his heels.
High up in the West
a studded, diamond W.
And then, as prophesied,
blatant, brazen, buoyant in the East –
and blue –
The Boyfriend’s Star.

We do our best,
we Queens, we mothers,
mothers of Queens.

We wade through blood
for our sleeping girls.
We have daggers for eyes.

Behind our lullabies,
the hooves of terrible horses
thunder and drum.

4.75
Ladies, Ladies, Ladies

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 around 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
of cups and plates,
her clearing of clutter,
her regional patter,
were just what I needed –
hungover and wrecked as I was from a night
on the batter.

Never again!
I needed to clean up my act,
get fitter,
cut out the booze and the fags and the sex.
Yes. And as for the latter,
it was time to turf out the blighter,
the beater or biter,
who’d come like a lamb to the slaughter
to Salome’s bed.

In the mirror, I saw my eyes glitter.
I flung back the sticky red sheets,
and there, like I said – and ain’t life a bitch –
was his head on a platter.

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.

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.
Look at me now.
Look

Anne Hathaway
‘Item I gyve unto my wife my second best
bed ...’
(from Shakespeare’s will)
The bed we loved in was a spinning world
of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seas
where we would dive for pearls. My lover’s
words
were shooting stars which fell to earth as
kisses
on these lips; my body now a softer rhyme
to his, now echo, assonance; his touch
a verb dancing in the centre of a noun.
Some nights, I dreamed he’d written me, the
bed
a page beneath his writer’s hands. Romance
and drama played by touch, by scent, by
taste.
In the other bed, the best, our guests dozed on,
dribbling their prose. My living laughing
love –
I hold him in the casket of my widow’s head
as he held me upon that next best bed.

Mrs Beast
These myths going round, these legends,
fairytales,
I’ll put them straight; so when you stare
Into my face – Helen’s face, Cleopatra’s,
Queen of Sheba’s, Juliet’s – then, deeper,
Gaze into my eyes – Nefertiti’s, Mona Lisa’s,
Garbo’s eyes - think again. The Little Mermaid
slit
Her shining, silver tail in two, rubbed salt
Into that stinking wound, got up and walked,
In agony, in fishnet tights, stood up and
smiled, waltzed,
All for a Prince, a pretty boy, a charming one
Who’d dump her in the end, chuck her, throw
her overboard.
I could have told her – look, love, I should
know,
They’re bastards when they’re Princes.
What you want to do is find yourself a beast.
The sex
Is better.

On my poker nights, the Beast
Kept out of sight. We were a hard school,
tough as fuck,
All of us beautiful and rich – the Woman
Who Married a Minotaur, Goldilocks, the Bride
Of the Bearded Lesbian, Frau Yellow Dwarf,
et Moi.
I watched those wonderful women shuffle and
deal –
Five and Seven Card Stud, Sidewinder, Hold
‘Em, Draw –
I watched them bet and raise and call.

But behind each player stood a line of ghosts
Unable to win. Eve, Ashputtel. Marilyn
Monroe.
Rapunzel slashing wildly at her hair.
Bessie Smith unloved and down and out.
Bluebeard’s wives, Henry VIII’s, Snow White
Cursing the day she left the seven dwarfs,
Diana,
Princess of Wales. The sheepish Beast came in
With a tray of schnapps at the end of the
game
And we stood for the toast – Fay Wray –
Then tossed our fiery drinks to the back of our
crimson throats.
Bad girls. Serious ladies. Mourning our dead.

So I was hard on the Beast, win or lose,
When I got upstairs, those tragic girls in my
head,
Turfing him out of bed; standing alone
On the balcony, the night so cold I could taste the stars
On the tip of my tongue. And I made a
prayer –
Thumbing my pearls, the tears of Mary, one
by one,
Like a rosary – words for the lost, the captive
beautiful,
The wives, those less fortunate than we.

Wives Choir texts
– Look at me now
– We do our best, we Queens, we mothers,
mothers of Queens
– I’m not the first or the last
– Ladies, Ladies, Ladies
– Be terrified, it’s you I love
The moon was a hand-mirror breathed on by
a Queen.
My breath was a chiffon scarf for an elegant
ghost.
I turned to go back inside. Bring me the Beast
for the night.
Bring me the wine-cellar key. Let the less-
loving one be me.

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.

Carol Ann Duffy (born 1955)