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

I was hung over.  Could barely get myself out of bed, into the shower and over to The Blue Café in order to meet Susan.  I was a quarter late.  And I'd arranged this date a week ago.  What is it with me?  I had been exchanging glances with Susan in the student common room for some time before I bumped into her down at the local town library.

“What are you doing in here?” I'd asked, “the University library not good enough for you?”

But – like me - she was looking for something she couldn't find in the University library.

“It'll take at least a week to come, from Belfast, so I thought I'd have a look in here on the off-chance,” she had replied.

It was then that I had asked her out for a coffee and we had arranged today.

   Susan had already ordered a pot of tea by the time I got there; she was sitting alone at one of the blue-painted tables alternately reading and sipping.  A stack of chemistry books by her elbow.

“Sorry, I'm late,” I said.
“Oh, I've not been waiting long,” she smiled but it was a smile a bit strained at the edges.

She put a book-mark into her heavy volume; I enquired what her reading matter was and she held it up so I could read the title: The Effects of Radiation on Hitler's Brain.

“It arrived from Belfast this morning.”

I went over to the bar and ordered a café au laît then sat down opposite Susan.

“Is it science-fiction?” I asked.

She tapped a long middle finger on the name of the author, Luiza Belosereva.  It didn't mean anything to me.

“Never heard of her,” I said.

 Now.  Why had I gone out dancing all night – not hitting the sack until six this morning - when I knew full well I had this lunchtime date today.  When I knew full well that I wanted to impress Susan.  And she seemed pretty hard to impress.  What, hidden away behind those glasses.  That intellectual facade.

“She's a Ukrainian scientist,” Susan said, “who happens to have been studying this subject for more than ten years.”
“Adolf Hitler's brain?”
“Yes.  It’s a large subject.  Hitler spent the summer and autumn of 1942 in his bunker in a pine forest near the town of Vinnitas in the Ukraine.  Ten thousand Soviet prisoners of war had built this bunker in concrete, stone and granite.  The greatest portion of …”

My coffee was ready, I went over to the bar to collect it.
“You forgot my chocolate,” I said, smiling at the young woman behind the counter.
She popped one on my saucer. 

When I got back to the table, Susan smiled with a bit of an effort, eager to pick up the trail of Hitler's diseased brain.

“The greatest portion of the stones came from a nearby quarry which it so happened - as recent investigations have proved - contained exceptionally high amounts of radiation due to the stone’s radon content.”
“Radon?”
“A colourless radioactive element of the rare gas group, the most stable isotope of which, radon-222, is a decay product of radium.”

Don't ask her what an isotope is, I told myself, don't ask her what an isotope is.  I gave her my best smile.

“Are you alright, Mark?”
“Yeah, I’m perfectly fine.”

I took a long sip of coffee, felt in my pocket to see if my slim volume of Nathaniel Tarn poetry was still there.  I intended to read a poem to Susan, For the Death of Anton Webern Particularly.  As a kind of lead in to asking her out to a concert.  The Neues
Leipziger Streichqartett were in town and they were going to do Webern's complete works for string quartet.  I had Susan nailed down as just the right intellectual partner for the concert.  Now if I could just hold my head up long enough, look interested in this Hitler stuff.

“So, what exactly happened to Hitler's brain?”
She picked up the book and quoted at me:
“The unusually hot summer strengthened the influence – she means the influence of radiation poisoning - further because high temperatures can treble the secretion of radon.  You do know that Hitler suffered from a lot of headaches and toothache, don’t you.  That he had difficulties keeping his balance, I mean he was one sick man.”

I'm afraid I spurted coffee down onto the table.  A slight laughing fit.
“Sorry,” I smiled.

She poured herself another cup of tea.
“And even though he was only fifty-three years old he began to age catastrophically quickly.”

I tapped my pocket, the poems: Sunday gardening, hoeing, trying to think of nothing but hoeing … 
“Yeah, well.”

Susan was busily finding something else out in that big book of hers.
“And you must remember,” she said, her eyes moving from the page to me and back again, as though I was some kind of yo-yo, “that it was whilst in this bunker that Hitler made one of his most fatal strategical errors: that his army should attack Stalingrad at the same time as make an offensive in the North Caucasus.”

She had finished her second cup of tea, hopefully her narrative too.  Now was the time to ask.
“You know I saw an advert for a opera CD on the television the other day, I think the company was called Magnum.  It was a double CD and their pack shot line was: So you only need to buy one opera album in your life.  Crazy, huh?”

Susan smiled, still a bit stiffly I thought.  Maybe she wanted more feedback on the Hitler story.

“Interesting stuff, that about Hitler's brain, it'd make a damn good film.”

I suddenly felt dizzy, had to put a hand down on the table to steady myself.

“Are you quite sure you're feeling alright, Mark.”
“Yeah, fine, bit too much dancing last night.”
“You were out dancing on a Thursday?”
Thursday was Alternative Night at the local disco.
“Yep.  Would you like something a bit stronger, a coffee?”

Damned if she didn't shake her head and pour herself another cup of tea.  How many cups could that pot hold?  I took my life in my hands, raised myself up, pushed off for the bar and got myself another coffee.

Sunday gardening, hoeing, trying to think of nothing but hoeing …
I got back in one piece, not spilling too much of my coffee.
“You know, I read an interesting poem the other day.”
“Oh, I'm not much for poetry, if it didn't happen in real life then it doesn't really interest me, you know what I mean.  I mean, I like people to have been to the places they write about.”

The obvious thing to have done would have been to invite her for a week-end to Vinnitas.  Deep in the Ukraine.  We could picnic out by the bunker.  Get a little tipsy on red wine then go down into the underground remains, get a little radioactive together.  But no, logic was not with me just then.  I felt something rushing up within me, something uncontrollable.  Something that would out.

“Well, I happen to think that poets are very much in touch with their feelings,” I said, “and surely that is worth something.”
“Oh, I didn't mean.”

I pulled the damn thing out.  The thin tome.
“I mean, look, he hears it on the radio, while he's hoeing, the death of Anton Webern.  And what about this, here.”

And I began quoting didn’t I, like a damn fool, aloud in the café:

From the inner skin of my dreams,
from the womb's lining turned inside out,
where the soaring pine cone once nestled …

“What about that, huh?”

Susan went bright red.  Pillar box red.  Behind her, I couldn’t help noticing, the barmaid beginning to smile.

“Well, I .. I mean, I didn't mean,” Susan sputtered.

She got up suddenly, pushed her glasses back onto her nose.  I half-rose in my chair.  She smiled awkwardly.  Disappeared left into the toilets.  I sat down.  Finished.  Wasted.  All shot. 

Now.  Think constructively.  Logically.  Okay.  If she comes back, if doesn’t leave immediately, forget the poetry, forget the concert.  Concentrate on that trip.  Open wide and say to her: “Let's visit Hitler's brain, in the pine forests of the Ukraine.”