Tana. Ethiopia. Khartoum. Aswân.
That for an hour, then a skittle of milk
and the chalky Pyramids rubbed into dust.
Here, Duffy illustrates the curiosity, imagination, and wonder that define the speaker's happy childhood. First, the speaker absorbs an incantatory, gripping lesson that takes her focus far away from her own classroom. The shifting attention span of childhood lets her dismiss that moment with the quick pronoun "that." The sensory experience of drinking milk, and the near-magical sight of pictures disappearing as they are erased, are equally fascinating. In childhood, every experience is novel for the speaker, and each one offers equal, ephemeral pleasure.
Brady and Hindley
faded, like the faint, uneasy smudge of a mistake.
Mrs Tilscher loved you.
Duffy here references two British serial killers known for targeting children. Such a prospect might reasonably terrify children, but Mrs. Tilscher's students are easily able to forget it: terrible events have no more staying power than easily-erased schoolwork. This is because of the overwhelming force of the teacher's love. Her gentle authority and affection for her students have a far greater effect on them than any fears waiting outside of the classroom. The simple declarative structure of the sentence "Mrs Tilscher loved you" has a prosodic and visual solidity that emphasizes the undeniable power of that love.
You ran through the gates, impatient to be grown,
as the sky split open into a thunderstorm.
Though the speaker, in retrospect, looks back on childhood with fondness and even longing, the child version of the speaker experiences the reverse: a desire to grow up quickly. Ironically, this desire to grow up is possible only because of the innocence and happiness of childhood. The speaker has only the faintest idea of the stresses that await outside of Mrs. Tilscher's class and after childhood, and thus can look to the future only with excitement. Still, the threat of a storm hints at what awaits the speaker. It symbolizes the sudden, intense, but natural and cyclical changes of adolescence.
