The Minotaur

The mahogany table-top you smashed Had been the broad plank top Of my mother's heirloom sideboard- Mapped with the scars of my whole life. That came under the hammer. That high stool you swung that day Demented by my being Twenty minutes late for baby-minding. 'Marvellous!' I shouted, 'Go on, Smash it into kindling. That's the stuff you're keeping out of your poems!' And later, considered and calmer, 'Get that shoulder under your stanzas And we'll be away.' Deep in the cave of your ear The goblin snapped his fingers. So what had I given him? The bloody end of the skein That unravelled your marriage, Left your children echoing Like tunnels in a labyrinth. Left your mother a dead-end, Brought you to the horned, bellowing Grave of your risen father And your own corpse in it.

loss free verse dark

The Minotaur - meaning Summary

Marriage as a Labyrinth

The poem recalls a violent domestic argument in which the speaker's late arrival leads the addressee to destroy household furniture. He presents his own provocative response as part of the damage, asking what he had fed in her. By ending with the Minotaur and labyrinth, the poem connects the marriage's collapse to inherited grief, anger, and family trauma, while acknowledging the children caught in its aftermath.

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