English Rain

Poem: In Your Mind

Author: Carol Ann Duffy

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The other country, is it anticipated or half-remembered?

Its language is muffled by the rain which falls all afternoon

one autumn in England, and in your mind

you put aside your work and head for the airport

with a credit card and a warm coat you will leave

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on the plane. The past fades like newsprint in the sun.

You know people there. Their faces are photographs

on the wrong side of your eyes. A beautiful boy

in the bar on the harbour serves you a drink – what? –

asks you if men could possibly land on the moon.

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A moon like an orange drawn by a child. No.

Never. You watch it peel itself into the sea.

Sleep. The rasp of carpentry wakes you. On the wall,

a painting lost for thirty years renders the room yours.

Of course. You go to your job, right at the old hotel, left,

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then left again. You love this job. Apt sounds

mark the passing of the hours. Seagulls. Bells. A flute

practising scales. You swap a coin for a fish on the way home.

Then suddenly you are lost but not lost, dawdling

on the blue bridge, watching six swans vanish

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under your feet. The certainty of place turns on the lights

all over town, turns up the scent on the air. For a moment

you are there, in the other country, knowing its name.

And then a desk. A newspaper. A window. English rain.