Disgrace by Carol Ann Duffy
Stanza
‘But one day we woke to our
disgrace, our house a coldness
of rooms, each nursing a
thickening cyst of dust and
gloom. We had not been home
in our hearts for months’
‘And how out words changed.
Dead flies in a web. How they
stiffened and blackened.
Cherished italics suddenly sour
on our tongues, obscenities
spraying themselves on the wall
in my head.’
‘Woke to your clothes like a
corpse on the floor, the small
deaths of lightbulbs pining all
day in my ears, their echoes
audible tears; nothing we would
not do to make it worse’
worse and worse. Into the night
with the wrong language,
waving and pointing, the
shadows of hands huge in the
bedroom. Dreamed if a naked
crawl from a dead place over
the other; both of us. Woke.’
‘Woke to an absence of grace;
the still-life of a meal,
untouched, wine bottle, empty,
ashtray, full. In our sullen
kitchen, the fridge hardened its
cool heart, selfish as art,
Analysis
 Begins with a fronted conjunction as if in a middle of a
story
 It seems the couple has been struggling for a while, but
they woke up (metaphorically and literally) to the
realisation that they have reached the end.
 The ‘disgrace’ they wake up to is more than the house,
but also the relationship
 ‘disgrace’ – repeated in stanza 8 to emphasise, gives
the poem a sense if circularity
 Repeated references to death and disease
 Contradicts the traditional saying, ‘home is where the
heart is’. The home is diseased, similar to the hearts
present in the relationship
 Metaphors for the relationship are present in the
entire stanza
 ‘dead flies in a web’ – the life is sucked out of the flies
just as meaning has been sucked out of the words
 ‘stiffened and blackened’ – death cannot be avoided, it
has already taken the flies, similar to the ways it will
take the relationship
 ‘cherished italics’ – signifies nature of words.
‘cherished’ meaning adornment and treasured.
 ‘suddenly sour’ – the words have ‘expired’ and become
unpleasant
 ‘obscenities on the wall’ – mind graffiti, unwanted rude
messages the ‘wall[s]’ of the brain
 ‘clothes like a corpse on the floor’ – simile to
emphasise the squalor of the house. Death is a
continued theme
 ‘small deaths of lightbulbs pining all day’ – lightbulbs
bring light and a sense of positivity yet it is ‘pining’ all
day.
 ‘their echoes audible tears’ – synaesthesia. Its ‘audible
tears’ are personified.
 Enjambed sentence between stanzas emphasises the
idea
 Draws the reader into the night, the idea of nightmares
 ‘wrong language’ alludes to inappropriate language
suggesting a difference from the usual, loving language
 The stanza ends with the verb ‘woke’
 ‘absence of grace’ links to the title ‘disgrace’ – sums up
the marriage of the two people, God has also left them,
the demise of their relationship
 The mess of the kitchen reflects the relationship
hummed.’
‘To a bowl of apples rotten to
the core. Lame shoes empty in
the hall where out voices asked
for a message after the tone,
the telephone pressing its ear to
distant, invisible lips’
‘And our garden bowing its
head, vulnerable flowers
unseen in the dusk as we
shouted in silhouette. Woke to
the screaming alarm, the
banging door the house-plants
trembling in their brittle soil.
Total
‘Disgrace. Up in the dark to
stand at the window, counting
the years to arrive there
faithless, unpenitent. Woke to
the meaningless starts, you and
me both, lost. Inconsolable
vowels from the next room.’
 Uses a common expression. The relationship is dead. A
dead metaphor.
 All aspects of the house are personified.
 ‘distant invisible lips’ – lips, erotic. The lips are distant,
similar to the people in the relationship.
 The argument is described as a ‘screaming alarm’.
 The house and garden are afraid of the downfall of the
relationship. House will be abandoned.
 Enjambment echoes the title bringing the poem to a
dramatic climax; defines the tone of tragedy
 ‘years’ – a relationship was on a downfall for a long
time, finally met their demise.
 ‘stars’ – connotations of fate, they are ‘meaningless’
similar to their fate