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

To be crass for a moment
and reduce the art of conducting to the level
of a playground squabble,

the streets-ahead winner
in this my-baton’s-bigger-than-your-baton bout
is Sir Adrian Boult

weighing in with something
broad and hefty, not so much a blackboard pointer
reconfi gured for orchestra

as a snooker cue in waiting.
By comparison, Otto Klemperer’s seems slight:
toothpick-thin, a thing that might

be lost to sight if waved too fast...
Otto; fast? Nah! Elsewhere those of Karajan and Haitink,
both snapped, invite you to think

about the circumstances
in which these (ill-tempered) breakages occurred:
the maestro’s word

contested by some soloist,
his boots outgrown? One of the woodwinds coming in
a demi-quaver early? A second violin

oh-so-very-slightly out of tune?
Killing time before the concert, these scenarios
distract me from the to-and-fro

of ditherers finding their seats
then scurrying back to order drinks for the interval,
or those droning on to some pal

from the recorded music society:
‘...yes, I’m on fi rst name terms with James Jolly...’
‘...I once met Lady Barbirolli...’

the too-loud verbiage
of would-be critics, culture snobs and concert bores,
few of whom could even read the score.

Easy to ignore them now,
but it’s when the performance begins
and they settle in

to a repertoire of restlessness
that these dry and joyless duffers truly irritate:
the staccato coughs that punctuate

a quiet passage,
the clearance of the throat, the blowing of the nose,
reserved for the adagio.

The old dear behind you
slowly peeling back the wrapping of a sweet.
The one next to you asleep,

their rattling indrawn breath
somehow prefi guring the expositional repeat.
The one fi dgeting in their seat.

Why exactly do they come?
The old shallow reasons: being seen to be seen;
being able to say they’ve been.

For me it’s different.
This display for example: not just artefacts under glass
but a stepping-stone to the past,

to the golden age
of recorded music. Something from which I take my leave
begrudgingly. And as I find my seat

in the vastness of this hall,
I imagine one of the great maestros of the age                   
- intense, Germanic, full of rage -

rising before the audience,
a stern spectre, baton aloft and ready to use it,
commanding, Be silent and respect the music.