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

The Sheriff was true to his white steed
and disappeared with his moustache and his tin star
in a cloud of dust and loneliness.
And the pale girl with curly hair
hid her disappointment
on the broad chest of the Oklahoma kid.
All so trite, yet so sacred
in those long-gone matinees of the Scala
and the Gil, the brave and manly hours
of our giddy youth.
Only a few years back, but long since lost.
So long ago that this long backward look
is stranded in misty confusion,
perhaps forgetfulness (or sudden emotion?).
Randolph Scott, lank and angular,
quick on the draw,
riding the silver screen. Scowling Bill Elliot,
emerging scot-free from the most complicated
machinations (CONTINUED IN THE NEXT EPISODE).
And Joel McCrea – Buffalo Bill –
beating out the technicolour guts
of the Indian baddie
Chief Yellow Dog.
Don’Ana’s little half-caste
had eyes wide open with fright,
I felt sick and sweaty, my digestion stopped,
and the gang howled and whistled.
Our collaboration proved conclusive:
no cattle rustler, no bank robber
in Abilene or Kansas City
was ever caught or brought in
without our first having raised the alarm
with teeth on edge and clenched fists. On the day
an unspeakable traitor
killed Jesse James from behind
we filed out subdued, with furtive tears.
Elias Garcia Avenue, with its elegant
straight lines, had a funeral look:
the pale grey acacias, leafless,
suggested the grim steel of pointed guns.
How different the light was then,
and what another, magical, dimension!
Time seemed to have stopped
on the sunflowers of Polana or dozed off
on the sands of Mendonça Barreto road.
But we were unconcerned
with such notions of time
since time was only a delectable blank.
Now, how old and worn
are the cowboys of our youth! Joel McCrea
with thinning white hair, sluggishly thumping
a slip of a boy, and Randolph Scott
with the wrinkled face of a peeled dry chestnut,
a lumbago-ridden cowboy riding his rheumatism.
Gunfire and melancholy smoke
in the horizontal movie afternoon.