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

My father’s cigarette box on his office desk
Was not for clients, or so a junior partner’s
Memoirs tell me now. I recognise, of course,
The flaw in this, because what you surely did
Like a party host, to put you both at ease, was ask
And, even before the answer came back, slide across
The familiar polished walnut, flipping it open
To display your hospitality, the double layered
Double twenty pack of Craven ‘A’ or Players,
While offering a lighter. This was the way
To break the fiscal ice, a courtesy, sound
Business practice. Smoking was assumed.

So in an awkward room put suddenly at ease,
Made almost home despite the ledgers,
Towering cabinets, glass paperweight
And mottled blotter, stacked wire trays
For Out and In which flanked the desktop
Like a makeshift fence, the health of an estate
Was reckoned. Then if things got difficult
You lit up too, companionably, a cloud
Of baffled concentration which allowed
Each pause for thought to seem intended,
Never at a loss. Together, best to take a fresh
Look at the figures, head-down, tapping ash.

How can I now accept that this was not
The way my father did it, that the box
Was only for those anxious, solitary after-hours
When columns should have measured up
And made their peace with him by five o’clock
But hadn’t? A serious, shy man of affairs,
He must have offered the ritual reassurance,
Surely he must, shooting a gentle glance
Of willed complicity, his own confidence
Mirrored in each client’s readiness to sit back
Like an invited guest, the cigarette
Already a bond between them, glowing, yet

How can I not recall how he’d bring work home,
Close to retirement, hurry his supper, hardly speak
Before the meal was over, or even after
As my mother helped him to make our dining room
A second office? With whisky and warm water,
Papers spread out across the green baize table cloth,
He wasn’t to be disturbed. Later I’d look in
On the way to bed, because this was the private man
I loved, and there he was, the very best of him
But at what price? No polished walnut box,
No neat professional desk. Who shared that pyramid
Of dead stubs in the ashtray? No one did.