Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

I

Sometime, the rain should calm.
Planning the trip ‘to sort out my head’
was easier than coming here and being here.

Wandering in morning rain too cold for June,
too early to have walked that far, on canal lanes
into industrial lostlands.

The irony of sweetest raspberry-like smell
emanating from industrial process,
was like my celebrated trip away from home.

In need of some company as I knew I would be,
and warmth from perversely wintry rain.

I wanted to run away from
my problems and face them on my own.

I struggled to sleep
in my tent in the Pennines.

Lonely there,
away from all company.
Sometime, the rain should calm.

II

And when it does, what then?
What follows?
Sun?

Canal lanes in Pennine
and birdsong at seven
are lovely, but not nearly all I need.

My problems can’t be wandered off,
just drunk to unfeeling.
Sometime, the rain should calm.

The cruel irony of surprise,
at sweetest raspberry smell from industry -
when the country is only rain and clammy mist,
spoiling the green.

III

I have drunk Stones, sheltered from rain -
listened to birds unbored with their immortal motes,
and trains going through peak on the hour, on southern lines.

My celebrated peak trip,
sometime the rain should calm.
Though now it doesn’t seem like doing.

IV

I went back into the north,
to towns nearer Manchester and Stockport,
and supermarkets, friendly faces.

The woman behind the counter in the newsagents
dried and sealed the letter for my girlfriend.
I smiled and thanked her.

An old man came in - asking
‘where has summer gone’; I said
‘it’s more like winter - I’m camping in the rain’.

Later, at the site,
a few more tents had appeared,
and the owner welcomed me.

We discussed her dog,
and how I missed mine,
before my twenty minute shower.

My warmest times in the Pennines.
Warm ironies, here.
Sometime, the rain should calm.

V

I’m enjoying the last night,
my trip ended early, gladly by the weather.
How close the birds are clustered around my tent.

The night’s dim deepens,
from torrential day.

Though I have enough gas
for the fading light.
The rain has just started again.
Sometime it should calm.

VI

It’s really heavy now.
It seems so late, at five past nine.
Another irony; I’m finally winding down.

Where are they?
I hope it doesn’t calm just yet.
The birds are back, helping.

VII

I met an American. Mike, from LA,
in the washroom, at ten.

With him, I mulled over
the extent of the mist here, ‘Snoughdonia’,
his girlfriend, and mine.

A high-school drop-out seven years on -
said ‘he prefurred travellin’
when I asked him, about ‘his subject’ -
he was about my age.

What were my own reasons for coming?
It’s come on even heavier.
Sometime it should calm.

VIII

It seems like the middle of the night, at half ten.
I’m a wolf at my makeshift supper -
drunk, with the gaslight still on.

I twist it out.
The rain is still heavy.
It should calm soon.