‘In Your Mind’ by Carol Ann Duffy describes a detailed daydream in which the reader of the poem embarks on a strangely familiar trip.
This poem depicts another of Duffy’s famous dream landscapes. The speaker, through second-person narration, asks the reader to imagine a world filled with the best of things. If you travel there, which the poem certainly makes tempting, you will find that your past struggles and griefs are gone. Unfortunately for the reader, it doesn’t last. They are thrust back into reality and made to confront the dreary real world.
The other country, is it anticipated or half-remembered?
Its language is muffled by the rain which falls all afternoon
one autumn in England, and in your mind
you put aside your work and head for the airport
with a credit card and a warm coat you will leave
on the plane. The past fades like newsprint in the sun.