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

Jack read Greek texts, like a wise old owl
depicted on an Athenian coin.
While wet Oxford winter winds would howl
round weathered spires, he would enjoin
himself not to tire of complex lines,
measuring out his life with epsilons,
iota subscripts, rough breathing signs,
dactyls, spondees and upsilons,
a priestly votary of Artemis,
ensconced in Aristotelian bliss.

Alice used to pass him in the College quad.
His black gown billowed in the evening breeze.
In The High, The Turl, or in the Bod.,
she used to glimpse him and be pleased.
He was fatherlike and a kind of god,
but as she drew near, she would feel unease.
He would never smile, he would never nod.
His self-sufficiency made her freeze.
The fondness she bore him was frenzied, odd,
dangerous as the sword of Damocles.

He taught her the patterns of ancient plays,
of Phaedra’s excess and Medea’s fall,
of Dido in Hades, who turned away,
of Aeneas, who followed duty’s call.
She listened acutely to every phrase.
She kept looking out for his face in Hall.
She kept the image of his brown-eyed gaze.
As though by Furies, she had been enthralled.
Carthage was ruined and she was crazed,
too blind to see the writing on the wall.

She saw him last in a term Collection,
where the dons criticised her lack of drive.
She soon became lost in introspection,
till her sanity took a headlong dive.
Rejection pushed her over the precipice
into a world of imagined fear,
a living hell, where Jack played Dis
and she could visit for half the year.
Now Alice lies in a hospital bed,
alone with Hippolytus inside her head.