Recognition by Carol Ann Duffy (Selling Manhattan, Anvil Press Poetry)

Things get away from one.
I’ve let myself go, I know.
Children? I’ve had three
and I don’t even know them.

I strain to remember a time
when my body felt lighter.
Years. My face is swollen
with regrets. I put powder on,

but it flakes off. I love him,
through habit, but the proof
has evaporated. He gets upset.
I tried to do all the essentials

on one trip. Foolish, yes,
but I was weepy all morning.
Quiche. A blond boy swung me up
in his arms and promised the earth.

You see, this came back to me
as I stood on the scales.
I wept. Shallots. In the window,
creamy ladies held a pose

which left me clogged and old.
The waste. I’d forgotten my purse,
fumbled; the shopgirl gaped at me,
compassionless. Claret. I blushed.

Cheese. Kleenex. It did happen.
I lay in my slip on wet grass,
laughing. Years. I had to rush out,
blind in a hot flush, and bumped

into an anxious, dowdy matron
who touched the cold mirror
and stared at me. Stared
and said I’m sorry sorry sorry.

Things do get away from us; they escape me often. Sometimes life goes on happening at such a rate that we lose track of ourselves, then, when faced with what we have become, we find ourselves unrecognisable from the people we thought we were. And no one can hear the tumult in each of our heads that accompanies our progress, but it’s there in all of us; more anxious some days than others; more critical today than it might be tomorrow. While we’re sometimes determined and resolute, we can often be confused and uncertain.

The dowdy matron of the poem was once young and loved. The poem plays moments from her past alongside her present, with references to her grocery shopping in between, because this is how daily thoughts are thrown together; what we once were juxtaposed with what we are now and interspersed with bread, sausages and the dry cleaning.

The woman admits to letting herself go; she is without vanity and appears to lack the sense of self-worth that is so necessary to our wellbeing. She has three children and confesses that she doesn’t “even know them”, which adds weight to the impression that she has just let life happen to her, rather than engaging in it or directing it to any great degree.

“I strain to remember a time/when my body felt lighter,” she tells us, struggling to recall a period in her life when she was slimmer, full of hope, and without the afflictions of age or the responsibilities of husband, house and children. “Years,” she says. Her face, she tells us, “is swollen/with regrets” because she has been crying about her lost youth.

She has powdered her face as if to disguise the puffiness, but the powder “flakes off” and there is no indication that she tries to repair it. She does not appear to love herself, and unless we love ourselves first, we cannot love others honestly because we burden them with our wants and needs, or worse, take them for granted. Or we love them out of habit, as our matron loves her husband (let’s assume that they’re married for the sake of the children), although she has lost the ability or desire to prove it. The proof that previously existed “has evaporated” and the husband “gets upset”, so perhaps the proof lay in making love and there is no more of that.

The woman “tried to do all the essentials in one trip” and now thinks it foolish, excusing herself because she was “weepy all morning”. Her thoughts are unclear, confused by recollections of a more optimistic past when “a blond boy” swung her up in his arms “and promised the earth”. That boy might have become the man who is now her husband, but whether he is or not, he doesn’t exist any more except in her memory – and this memory came back to her as she stood on the scales and wept. Wept for the girl she once was who weighed a whole lot less, for the boy who made her promises, and for the woman she has become with the powdery, flaking face and the three unknown children. Sometimes in life we expected something better and feel hard done by that we didn’t get it. We have to remember that we are part of the equation; we helped to make it happen – or not. And the aspects of life that disappoint one person might be experienced by someone else as something to be joyful about. To a woman living in a cardboard box behind a pillar in Holborn, this unhappy matron’s life might be a major aspiration.

The matron of the poem may well have done the best she could in the circumstances in which she found herself, but she doesn’t allow for that thought, despite the fact that our satisfaction with life is largely a matter of our own attitude. So the quiche and shallots punctuate her memories as she shops, and the creamy ladies in the window who held a pose – who must be shop dummies – being eternally slim and youthfully dressed, leave her feeling “clogged and old”.

“The waste,” she says, as if seeing her life as a waste. “Claret,” she says, but I don’t think she’s buying it; it’s the colour of her face as she blushes when she finds that in her emotional confusion she has forgotten her purse.

Then there’s “Cheese” and “Kleenex” as if she’s staring at her groceries at the checkout even as she assures herself that she really was young once, lying in her slip “on the wet grass,/laughing”. She rushes out of the shop in a hot flush, so menopause might have added to her emotional mess, and there she is, suddenly facing herself in a mirror somewhere (think of all those mirrors in all those shopping malls) and apologising. Apologising for having lost sight of herself, for not having gathered her wits; for crumbling with the passing of years, and for feeling frumpy and foolish in front of a “compassionless” shopgirl who may one day be standing where she is.

Times Recommends

• The 100 Best Books of the Decade
• The Times picks the 50 best paperbacks of 2009
• The conversation: James Ellroy