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

Sometimes, not often, its true,
                                 an old man comes in on the mail coach
                                 Under the small town’s principal arch
And, reclining against the dashboard, the driver smokes and reads
                                                      his paper
                             But a harp is concealed in his bosom;
The inn is closing up, the church is quite silent, the shopkeeper won’t                                                                                                 sell
                                                      his kerosene
                                Nor anything else besides.
The old man adjusts his dickey-bow, his hanky traps a sneeze, his                                                                                           pocket
                                                      yields a harpsichord
                              Which he puts together to the sound of trumpets.
The distant rumble of a tuning-fork, storm-like disturbs our eternal
                                                      repose
                              The air of which is windless and bitter;
The last flies are trooping, and gather on the horse’s backside and a
                                                      flourish of its tail accidentally
                               Sounds the triangle under the shaft-bow;
In melodious embrace all intertwine: reverberating bronze and
                                                      horsehair, and a noble cedar
                               Sawn up out of eyeshot;
And we, stuck to the tarmac and barely awake, still manage to listen                                                                                                 to
                                                       the orchestra
                               Beneath our unsetting sun.
And this is the only reason behind all that we do in our small                                                                                           forgotten
                                                       town,
                               Its forgotten houses and little cinemas;
And the children run after the coach empty-handed, or almost – with                                                                                                    a
                                                        doughnut if they’re lucky
                              Legs dappled with iodine;
Carelessly clad, outlandishly red of face, hair tousled beyond all                                                                                           combing,
                              Or parting or ribboning, they run . . .
. . . To where there’s hope of loving one another, of flying, aching,
                                                          vanishing away
                               To the thunder of their drums.