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

One Sunday evening in the local pub where we had just started being
                                                                             served, this bloke -
          - forty-ish, short but weathered and wiry –
who one of my friends knew worked as a hod-carrier for his girlfriend’s 
                                                                             father, kept
          staring over at us and snorting, almost spitting,
between glugs of beer, as if the sight of our existence was an utterly
                                                                             unbearable insult,
          or we had killed his wife and damned his soul.
Soon after, leaving, he followed us outside into the car park and without
                                                                             provocation
          or a warning punched the nearest to him hard
in the face, then drew back to do it again so that we, too confused, no, too
                                                                             terrified,
          to run, were forced to fight, to let him fight
what certainly wasn’t his problem, only the best substitute he could come
                                                                             up with, and
          not knowing how, wrestled him to the ground.
But pinned there, under four adolescents, he struggled and seethed,
                                                                             refused to let up;
          hit, kicked, bit, butted, crazier than before
everytime we eased off, until in the end there was nothing to do except 
                                                                             continue kicking
          that mad fucker, kicking that poor bastard,
no matter how bad it all was with our boots thudding in, and the screams,
                                                                             the new sins,
          the lost innocence, the twisted bloody face,
ugly and relenting, bathed by a kind light from above, the sudden
                                                                             sickening realisation
          that the moon will go on rising but we won’t.