Before You Were Mine
Carol Ann Duffy * Track #6 On Mean Time
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Album Mean Time
- #1The Captain of the 1964 Top of the Form Team
Carol Ann Duffy
- #2Litany
Carol Ann Duffy
- #3Nostalgia
Carol Ann Duffy
- #4Stafford Afternoons
Carol Ann Duffy
- #5Before You Were Mine
Carol Ann Duffy
- #6Welltread
Carol Ann Duffy
- #7Confession
Carol Ann Duffy
- #8Valentine
Carol Ann Duffy
- #9Havisham
Carol Ann Duffy
- #10First Love
Carol Ann Duffy
Before You Were Mine by Carol Ann Duffy
Performed by
Carol Ann DuffyAbout
This poem comes from Carol Ann Duffy’s collection Mean Time. This layered title, a polyseme, can refer to the measurement of time taken from Greenwich in London, known as Greenwich Mean Time, from which bearings are taken which control the world’s clocks. It signifies the inescapable nature of time...
Before You Were Mine Annotated
I’m ten years away from the corner you laugh on
with your pals, Maggie McGeeney and Jean Duff.
The three of you bend from the waist, holding
each other, or your knees, and shriek at the pavement.
Your polka-dot dress blows round your legs. Marilyn.
I’m not here yet. The thought of me doesn’t occur
in the ballroom with the thousand eyes, the fizzy, movie tomorrows
the right walk home could bring. I knew you would dance
like that. Before you were mine, your Ma stands at the close
with a hiding for the late one. You reckon it’s worth it.
The decade ahead of my loud, possessive yell was the best one, eh?
I remember my hands in those high-heeled red shoes, relics,
and now your ghost clatters toward me over George Square
till I see you, clear as scent, under the tree,
with its lights, and whose small bites on your neck, sweetheart?
Cha cha cha! You’d teach me the steps on the way home from Mass, stamping stars from the wrong pavement. Even then
I wanted the bold girl winking in Portobello, somewhere
in Scotland, before I was born. That glamorous love lasts
where you sparkle and waltz and laugh before you were mine.