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

Poetry Library Southbank Centre - The Poetry Library housing the Arts Council Collection at Southbank Centre

« Previous item
Contents of this issue
Next item »

Sam Smith

print this page

Could I Be The Man Who Put The Ast Into Bard?

The explicable is passé. Time has become
a commodity (of variable quality)
to be weighed, or counted out,
like boxers and carrots.

I remember, therefore I was.
I dreamt, therefore I am.
I was what      I imagine      I remember.
I am what is, the confines
of my circumstance, affected always
by events elsewhere.              I am
my uncertain memories, my unadmitted desires.

Women,
principally, although there are some men,
rushing from one to the next, only believe
they exist if they are desired, bodies
like cats
arching themselves up to be touched.
As any bookie knows
erratic responses reinforce habits.

Language is not
not the key to being:
being is subjective, asks nothing.
Action though, any action, becomes
a contrivance, theft of
the yet unwritten future.
I,
most certainly,
won’t be.

 

Page(s) 33

Back to top