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

     On the same day that Jean Luc Godard was seventy and my aunt Janet was involved in a collision with the Alaskan space station, Antonio Grissell was walking along Milton Road in the East End of London when, to his surprise, coming in the opposite direction, was the complete text of Paradise Lost. It had somehow become detached from its extensive footnotes and was slithering along on its belly. Antonio ran towards it but when Paradise Lost saw him approaching it slipped under a hedge and vanished into someone’s garden.

     Antonio felt a powerful pang of loss. With Paradise Lost in his grasp almost anything might have been possible. Then he thought of Milton’s achievement and the obscure plaque commemorating the long-vanished window through which the arrogant Charles had stepped to his death. Antonio cheered up. ‘Hence, loathed Melancholy of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born,’ he cried. ‘In Stygian cave forlorn ’Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy, Find out some uncouth cell, where brooding darkness spreads his jealous wings, And the night raven sings; There under ebon shade as and low-browed rocks, Asagged as thy locks, In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell.’ A concerned local resident telephoned the police. An armed response unit arrived promptly at the end of the road. They could see at once that Antonio was armed with a suspicious and quite probably dangerous quotation. Afterwards the officer who fired the fatal shot, together with his colleagues, was exonerated of all blame by the Police Complaints Authority. The Crown Prosecution Service announced that no charges would be brought.