10' away from the Poet Laureate

I went to a poetry convention today. Sat in the front row and less than 10' from Carol Ann Duffy and loved her interpretation of Shakespeare's only bequeath after his death to his wife of his 'second best bed' . For years people thought that it was an indication that Shakespeare didn't love his wife and this was a snub, which it could have well been. Duffy saw it as a romantic gesture and that Ann Hathaway would have known the secrets of the marriage bed that no one else was party to, hence the gift of their bed. What ever the secret was between William and Ann - I love Carol's poem and today it felt as if she just read it to me.

Anne Hathaway
by Carol Ann Duffy from The World's Wife

'Item I gyve unto my wife my second best bed ...'
(from Shakespeare's will)

The bed we loved in was a spinning world
of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seas
where we would dive for pearls. My lover's words
were shooting stars which fell to earth as kisses
on these lips; my body now a softer rhyme
to his, now echo, assonance; his touch
a verb dancing in the centre of a noun.
Some nights, I dreamed he'd written me, the bed
a page beneath his writer's hands. Romance
and drama played by touch, by scent, by taste.
In the other bed, the best, our guests dozed on,
dribbling their prose. My living laughing love -
I hold him in the casket of my widow's head
as he held me upon that next best bed.