POETRY ... Carol Ann DUFFY

Name
Carol Ann Duffy

When did your name
change from a proper noun
to a charm?

Its three vowels
like jewels
on the thread of my breath.

Its consonants
brushing my mouth
like a kiss.

I love your name.
I say it again and again
in this summer rain.

I see it,
discreet in the alphabet,
like a wish.

I pray it
into the night
till its letters are light.

I hear your name
rhyming, rhyming,
rhyming with everything.

From Rapture
Carol Ann Duffy
(Picador, 2005)

Carol Ann Duffy won the 2005 T.S. Eliot Poetry Prize for Rapture (2005).