reasons for this post:

1) Because I am bored, and procrastinating writing my (final) essay.
2) Because I love her poetry, and have really enjoyed rereading some of it this week
3) Jeremy has been very patient listening to my poetry readings, but I think he might be getting a little bored with being vilified because of his gender...
3) Because she is simply just so clever, and deserves to reach wider audiences. Hard to choose a favourite poem, but this one currently amuses. Watch this space.

****

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 the 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.


- Carol Ann Duffy