the flowers close to their own premonitions,

the grass sweeten and cool and green

where a bee swooned backwards out of a rose.

There you were,

a glass of lemony wine in each hand,

walking towards me always, your magnolia tree

marrying itself to the May air.

How you talked! And how I listened,

spellbound, humbled, daughterly,

to your tall tales, your wise words,

the joy of your accent, unenglish, dancey, humorous;

watching your ash hair flare and redden,

the loving litany of who we had been

making me place my hands in your warm hands,

younger than mine are now.

Then time only the moon. And the balm of dusk.

And you my mother.

A Rare Bee

I heard tell of a tale of a rare bee,

kept in a hive in a forest’s soul

by a hermit – hairshirt, heart long hurt –

and that this bee made honey so pure,

when pressed to the pout of a poet

it made her profound; or if smeared

on the smile of a singer it sweetened his sound;

or when eased on the eyes of an artist,

Pablo Picasso lived and breathed;

so I saddled my steed.

No birds sang in the branches over my head,

though I saw the wreaths of empty nests

on the ground as I rode – girl, poet, knight –

deeper into the trees, where the white hart

was less than a ghost or a thought, was light

as the written word; legend. But what wasn’t going, gone,

I mused, from the land, or the sky, or the sea?

I dismounted my bony horse to walk;

out of the silence, I fancied I heard

the bronze buzz of a bee.

So I came to kneel at the hermit’s hive –

a little church, a tiny mosque – in a mute glade

where the loner mouthed and prayed, blind

as the sun, and saw with my own eyes

one bee dance alone on the air.

I uttered my prayer: Give me your honey,

bless my tongue with rhyme, poetry, song.

It flew at my mouth and stung.

Then the terrible tune of the hermit’s grief.

Then a gesturing, dying bee

on the bier of a leaf.

ALSO BY CAROL ANN DUFFY

Standing Female Nude

Selling Manhattan

The Other Country

Mean Time

Selected Poems

The World’s Wife

Feminine Gospels

New Selected Poems

Rapture

Love Poems

AS EDITOR

I Wouldn’t Thank You for a Valentine

Anvil New Poets Volume 2

Stopping for Death

Time’s Tidings: Greeting the 21st Century

Hand in Hand: An Anthology of Love Poems

Out of Fashion: An Anthology of Poems

Overheard on a Saltmarsh: Poets’ Favourite Poems

Answering Back

The Twelve Poems of Christmas

To the Moon: An Anthology of Lunar Poetry

About the Author

Carol Ann Duffy is the author or editor of several volumes of poetry, including The World’s Wife, Rapture, and also books for children. She has received, among other honors, the Forward Prize, the Whitbread Poetry Award, the Lannan Award, and the E. M. Forster Prize for her work. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Duffy lives in Manchester, England, and is currently Professor of Contemporary Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University. You can sign up for email updates here.