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Time Transfixed

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This poem is about a painting called ‘Time Transfixed’ by René Magritte (search online for an image) - both are deliberately a little strange. Have a little fun with the poem by reading it backwards - from the last word to the first word (today, yesterday, tomorrow, away chuff I….etc.). Then read the poem again from beginning to end. Think about why making things strange can help us think of them differently.

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by René Magritte

In the Thinking Room
at Childhood Hall,
the brown clock ticks
with the sound of the kiss
that my Grandma makes
against my cheek
again and again
when we first meet
after a week
of all the hours
that the brown clock’s tick
has kissed away
today, to-
morrow, yesterday

are all the same
to the plum steam-train
that I sometimes hear
in the Thinking Room
at Childhood Hall –
it has no passengers at all,
till I grow old enough
and tall
to climb aboard
the plum steam-train
and blow a kiss
as I chuff away to to-
morrow, yesterday, today.

Time Transfixed

by Carol Ann Duffy


Poem © Carol Ann Duffy. Reproduced by permission of the author c/o Rogers, Coleridge & White Ltd., 20 Powis Mews, London W11 1JN.

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