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Quote by Carol Ann Duffy

“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.”

Quote by Carol Ann Duffy

Author

Carol Ann Duffy
Carol Ann Duffy

Carol Ann Duffy is a renowned British poet known for her unique poetic style and profound social insight. Her work covers a wide range of themes, including love, family, identity, and gender. Born on December 23, 1955, Duffy is the first female Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, and her poetry has been widely beloved and has won numerous literary awards. more

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“We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here. After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with colour, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn't it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked -- as I am surprisingly often -- why I bother to get up in the mornings. To put it the other way round, isn't it sad to go to your grave without ever wondering why you were born? Who, with such a thought, would not spring from bed, eager to resume discovering the world and rejoicing to be a part of it?”

“As men talk in a dream, so Corinth all, Throughout her palaces imperial, And all her populous streets and temples lewd, Mutter'd, like tempest in the distance brew'd, To the wide-spreaded night above her towers. Men, women, rich and poor, in the cool hours, Shuffled their sandals o'er the pavement white, Companion'd or alone; while many a light Flared, here and there, from wealthy festivals, And threw their moving shadows on the walls, Or found them cluster'd in the corniced shade Of some arch'd temple door, or dusky colonnade.”

“As a perfume doth remain In the folds where it hath lain, So the thought of you, remaining Deeply folded in my brain, Will not leave me; all things leave me - You remain. Other thoughts may come and go, Other moments I may know That shall waft me, in their going, As a breath blown to and fro, Fragrant memories; fragrant memories Come and go. Only thoughts of you remain In my heart where they have lain, Perfumed thoughts of you, remaining, A hid sweetness, in my brain. Others leave me; all things leave me - You remain.”

“Poem of the day 1. nóvember 2010: Tunglskin Og vatnið starir, starir köldum augum á stirndan himin yfir bleikum tindum. Og inn í dalnum dökkir skuggar trjánna við dapra geilsa tunglsins stíga dans. Og yfir sandinn, langar óraleiðir, lýsir tunglið spor þín, þreytti maður, og bregður köldum, annarlegum glampa á andlit þitt. Ég sé þig hverfa, hverfa inn í skuggann. Og yfir öllu vakir þögnin - þögnin.”