This week’s featured poem is by Carol Ann Duffy, a wonderful Scottish poet who was Britain’s first woman (lesbian, working class) Poet Laureate from 2009 to 2019.It was very hard to choose a favourite, as she writes so much fantastic burning activist poetry, but this is one of her gentler ones…(though it still burns.)

Warming Her Pearls Carol Ann Duffy

Next to my own skin, her pearls.My mistress

bids me wear them, warm them, until evening

when I’ll brush her hair. At six, I place them

round her cool white throat, All day I think of

her,

resting in the Yellow Room, contemplating silk

or taffeta, which gown tonight? She fans herself

whilst I work willingly, my slow heat entering

each pearl. Slack on my neck, her rope.

She’s beautiful. I dream about her

in my attic bed; picture her dancing

with tall men, puzzled by my faint, persistent scent

beneath her French perfume, her milky stones.

I dust her shoulders with a rabbit’s foot,

watch the soft blush seep through her skin

like an indolent sigh. In her looking glass

my red lips part as though I want to speak.

Full moon. Her carriage brings her home. I see

her every movement in my head…Undressing,

taking off her jewels, her slim hand reaching

for the case, slipping naked into bed, the way

she always does…And I lie here awake,

knowing the pearls are cooling even now,

in the room where my mistress sleeps. All night

I feel their absence and I burn.