Studen ts Studen ts Death and the moon (for Catherine Marcangeli) The moon is nearer than where death took you at the end of the old year. Cold as cash in the sky's dark pocket, its hard old face is gold as a mask tonight. I break the ice over the fish in my frozen pond, look up as the ghosts of my wordless breath reach for the stars. If I stood on the tip of my toes and stretched, I could touch the edge of the moon.The poet instantly focuses Death and the Moon on an image of ‘The moon’, posing as a melancholy symbol of night and the notion of death. Following this, Duffy connects with the semantics of distance, ‘nearer’, expressing her lack of understanding about ‘where death took you’. For Duffy, the abstract notion of death can only be expressed through the semantics of the physical, the poet relying on images of distance to conceptualize her loss.The focus on ‘Cold’, both within ‘Cold as cash’ and also in ‘frozen pond’ gives an idea of deep melancholy. Cold is often a temperature associated with lack of energy and sadness, Duffy drawing upon this. Indeed, ‘Frozen pond’ with ‘fish’ inside could symbolize how Duffy’s world has seemed to stop. Death has impacted her so drastically that everything has slowed down to still. Water, normally an image of movement and joy, is frozen solid in the poem. Death has turned the world into a haunted ice landscape.Marcangeli is the partner of the painter and poet Adrian Henri, who was a long-time friend of Duffy.Henri died in 2000, 2 years before the poem was published.The speaker is trying to quantify and measure the distance between her and her lost friend, an impossible calculation.Duffy presents grief as a struggle to re-establish the lost connection.The “old year” can be taken literally, but also signifies the end of a year or era, from the time he was alive to a new, sadder era after his death.The adjective “old” is rhymed with “cold” and “gold”, which follow, giving the stanza unity.In what is very much like a metaphysical conceit — for an explanation see the latter part of the song bio of any metaphysical poem — Duffy invokes the stars and the moon and relates the cosmos to her feelings.The “ghosts of my wordless breath” describes her inability to put words to her grief; these unspoken words lie with her spirit and are not solid expressions.The metaphor in the last line is unexpected.Often the moon signifies mystery or aspiration.Here there may be a hint of lunacy — a sort of mental imbalance — that aligns her with the moon.The hard, allieratated, percussive “c"s and "k"s in "cash”, “dark”, “pocket” and “mask” reflect the stabls of pain she feels.The metaphor of the sky as a “dark pocket” is inventive and original, as if the moon with its “hard old face” is greedy for the dead soul of her friend. It is interesting that she clearly sees the moon as unfeeling and cruel, in contrast to the more kindly “man-in-the-moon of children’s nursery rhymes and stories.In what is very much like a metaphysical conceit — for an explanation see the latter part of the song bio of any metaphysical poem — Duffy invokes the stars and the moon and relates the cosmos to her feelings.The “ghosts of my wordless breath” describes her inability to put words to her grief; these unspoken words lie with her spirit and are not solid expressions.The metaphor in the last line is unexpected. Often the moon signifies mystery or aspiration.Here there may be a hint of lunacy — a sort of mental inbalance — that aligns her with the moon Breaking the ice is a common idiom meaning to cut through awkwardness in a social situation and to create ease. The speaker is trying to reconnect with people, but for her they are “fish”, creatures distant from humans — an example of metonymy.The frozen pond is her frozen life, which bereavement has paralysed. 1 / 2
Studen ts Studen ts The use of the conditional tense, ‘I could touch the edge of the moon’, signals Duffy’s own self-doubt. She knows that she can never reach ‘the moon’, meaning she could never reach further. This means she will never reach that strange location ‘where death took you’. The use of the personal pronoun in the first line of the poem building on the personal elegy style. The poem is incredibly depressing, Duffy’s world transformed into a soft silence.I stooped at the lip of your open grave to gather a fistful of earth, hard rain, tough confetti, and tossed it down. It stuttered like morse on the wood over your eyes, your tongue, your soundless ears. Then as I slept my living sleep the ground gulped you, swallowed you whole, and though I was there when you died, in the red cave of your widow's unbearable cry, Duffy extends the stillness of the first stanza into the opening of the second. The stagnant poet, ‘stooped at the lip of your open grave’ is watching the coffin in the funeral ceremony. The first instance of movement occurs when Duffy throws ‘a fistful of earth’ on the grave – burying her friend. The oxymoronic ‘hard rain’ and ‘tough confetti’ compound a sense of disbelief. The use of oxymoron presents conflicting emotions, Duffy unable to understand the death of her friend.After the ethereal quality of the first stanza, the second begins with his grave, a contrasting concrete depiction.However, the theme of words and speech are picked up with the ambiguous “lip”.The “open grave” has a gothic feel, like a horror movie.Everything in this stanza is harsh, almost violet. The word ‘fistful’ conveys aggression, as though the narrator is angry at the death of her loved one. Rain is generally viewed as soft, so the adjective “hard” inverts the reader’s expectation. Confetti is associated with weddings and celebration, so this too is contradictory. Duffy therefore shows how perceptions become twisted with grief.The implication is that, although the poet is “living” she is also sleeping, unable to live fully because of her grief.The personified earth “stutters”, Duffy using onomatopoeia to describe the sound of soil hitting the coffin. Like the “wordless breath” in stanza one, the “eyes”, “tongue” and “ears” are all organs of communication, which death has destroyed.The reference to morse code is also significant in that it is a terse, stylised form of messaging devoid of the emotional communication the poet craves This creates immediacy. The speaker can’t escape the pain, reinforced by her presence at the moment of death.The verb “gulped” has implications of greed, perhaps suggesting that the ground is unjustly preying upon the dead — it has greedily taken him from the speaker whilst she sleeps.The gothic theme continues in this painful image — the “red cave” is a metaphor for a mouth. The depiction of pain speaks for itself.Note the use of strong colours, black and gold in stanza one and red in stanza two. Nothing in this poem is soft and gentle
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