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

Only the one hand up.
The white leaves wait in the haze.
The neon tubes sizzle and clack
over the faces as thin
as the whispers at the back of the class.
And the stink of damp wool:

‘According to T.T. strong forces
have reached Thermopylae, the lock of Greece.’
Carefully they stalk about in the poem.
Some turn over the words like stones
and leer at Karin Boye in the heather
where she cowers under the weight of the century.
But the searchers are out in vain
haven’t a hope of catching her.
Well, what about Thermopylae?
Only the one hand in the air.

The King of the Persians, the scourge of the earth
screams in the microphones;
the voice rises and breaks.
They bring up the year 1941.
The teacher knows. It’s among his memories:
tanks clattering into antiquity
parachutes drifting over Crete like dandelion seeds -
hi, let’s hoard Greek stamps

But what does history say to you and to you?

The glint from a Persian shield
shines into Gunilla’ s morning world
with its brown tones and distant footfalls
and father up from the table In a rage.
His band clenches and opens round his serviette.

What one says can be grasped only
by someone who has a use for it.
What a terrible resistance.

And what are you up to?
The rascal answers with a sly laugh
he’s on the other side, unseen,
a Xerxes with a cooling penknife in his pocket.

The teacher’s flow of words divides
in twenty tongues. And his Monday loathing
blizzards through twenty worlds.
In some of them it feels fresh. He sees
a class of bone fragments and damp wool.
He himself has twenty faces
all of them incomplete.