Carol Ann Duffy — Litany

The soundtrack then was a litany – candlewick bedspread three piece suite display cabinet – and stiff-haired wives balanced their red smiles, passing the catalogue. Pyrex. A tiny ladder ran up Mrs Barr’s American Tan leg, sly like a rumour. Language embarrassed them. The terrible marriages crackled, cellophane round polyester shirts, and then The Lounge would seem to bristle with eyes, hard as the bright stones in engagement rings, and sharp hands poised over biscuits as a word was spelled out. An embarrassing word, broken to bits, which tensed the air like an accident. This was the code I learnt at my mother’s knee, pretending to read, where no one had cancer, or sex, or debts, and certainly not leukaemia, which no one could spell. The year a mass grave of wasps bobbed in a jam-jar; a butterfly stammered itself in my curious hands. A boy in the playground, I said, told me to fuck off; and a thrilled, malicious pause salted my tongue like an imminent storm. Then uproar. I’m sorry, Mrs Barr, Mrs Hunt, Mrs Emery, sorry, Mrs Raine. Yes, I can summon their names. My mother’s mute shame. The taste of soap.