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

This Pentecost I haven't got away
          at all. You see,
it's just not what you'd call a holiday,
not one kept by the whole community.
For that you need the banks to shut up shop
and as it's hard business as usual
there can't be variation of routine.
Instead I take a stroll rather than stop
inside on such a day - late spring but dull,
the may a lather, oaks and beeches green.

Five houses are for sale along our road
          each board leaning
a bit more out, like some nap hand, in code
estate agents think helps to sell the thing.
Less than two years ago they all moved in:
five couples and ten cars - no kids or pets.
Now only one Fiesta engine clicks
cool on each drive as sleek blackbirds begin
their evening antiphon of shrill regrets
and from his fridge the debt-collector picks

one TV dinner from the stack. Next door
          the programmer
reheats his takeaway. At Number Four
it smells like curry, warmed up earlier
this afternoon. The nerd at Number One,
unshaven still - executives work now
from home - unloads some lager from a van.
Across the road, because his cook has gone,
the quantity surveyor ponders how
much oil he'll need to grease his omelette pan.

It’s rare to see a sacrament begin,
          or vows exchanged
to cleave together through life’s thick and thin,
though rings are swapped and partnerships arranged.
Cohabitants hold hands at jeweller’s
windows, tables are full in restaurants
and offers of a week in Tenerife
are grabbed. Contracts, defining his and hers,
anticipating each as litigants,
are framed to obviate most future grief.

So life goes on, although they change the locks.
          It's strange, but why
do marriages break up, like ships on rocks,
but these “relationships” break down? They try
to mask with words inbuilt fragility
and in their choice of them betray the fact
they all along knew which was meant to last
and which in time would of necessity
malfunction, like machines, because they lacked
intention to endure and skipped the fast

that must precede the feast. What, after all,
          did they expect?
A three-year warranty, with help a call
away on their mobiles? An architect
who dared design a building on a site
so certain to subside would be classed mad.
Or did they think it was some sort of trial
to see if they were suited, which they might
abandon, if it soured and all turned sad,
so "civilised" about it they could smile?

Night's edging on. The midges start to bite.
          Most windows glow
uncurtained, modern life-styles in full sight:
wide-screen TVs tuned in to seers who know
it all - the nation's fate, the social trends,
the top ten books you buy but never read.
Dark drops of rain release electric smells
from pavement dust, a breeze from Denmark bends
Leylandii hedgetops. My neighbours weed
herbaceous borders, and Saint James' bells

throb out shock-waves of solemn sound that swerve
          a homing scarf
of starlings overhead. Their swarming curve
smears out the rising moon's rose-yellow half.
Arcturus winks low in the south between
two horizontal branches of the oak
estate developers schemed hard to fell.
The party starts at Number One. They're keen
to show the road they're liberal sort of folk:
we're all invited there, partners as well.