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

willow and oak and wild plum gnawed this black salt land
and tied your hands

pipey turves reedy torts
empty bellies withering kids
murmured your James
stumbling sodden
back home late from the Black Horse
dragging his boots to bed

the peat he’d cut to kindle and slowly warm you
flared glared blazed spat
was in a moment gone
a day’s work burnt
knots in the firing
nothing to sell
the bread oven ash and chill

Monday and the scrubbed sheets dusted by a sharp fen blow
and Layton Susan George
Solomon Isaac Matilda Alice Sarah Becky and Obadiah
squealed No to school
No No No No No
streaming up and up the lane
away to the lodes
frogs fish newts leeches reeds dens
the arching miles of open sky
the sousing light
silver willowed yellow willowed dream willowed
the edge of nowhere
turf-pools
the starving water

It was always raining
and it was always going to rain
you had to keep their smudged knees above water
his boots becket spade from getting the mould

stooping you put down duckboards inside your drowning house
finding Ararat
founding America
a fistful of toddlers clawing at your skirts
shouldering sacks of carrots loading turf
you dreamed of the ship of the Fens
her spire gleaming over the distant Isle of Eels

I can see you Sophie summer 1862
Ann Elizabeth the third squirming frowning
newborn in her crib
Ellen Susan and George clanking James’ creepers round the house
and now caught up with her
you don’t see them but him sliding
suddenly slithering
his soles losing their grip on the strip of wood bridging the water
black turf everywhere
the blanket weed closing over him
his death is always with you

even as Georgie shouts
Mam there’s Pa
forgot his creepers again Mam
Mam wake up
Eliza wants you Mam
that do NOW

sucking coffee mess from his peat-black finger
into her newborn mouth
and you so thirsty for sleep
you can’t dredge words to tell him
not the twelfth time running

And then Sophie
the bitter month
September, 1888
rich with dishes of apples and plums
George’s children all day picking fruit

Susan’s skin suddenly so hot it hurt her everywhere
her throat black as peat
and closing like a trap
her seeing her mam
and you twice
bit by bit her body went stiff as bog oak

Harriet and George William
slowly going after
leaving eleven years Robert on his own

a crying silence

1890 you’re back with the girls again
you pose and smile under your close black bonnet
there’s wood under your feet
they’ve given you a waterproof roof
someone else is cooking tonight
and Hannah’s coming round with her sloe gin

Look at the fen Sophia
Look at that swaddling light
And that still water
which was always out to get you

Only Sophia
look what you did
you went and you walked all over it