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

You came here twenty years ago, a refugee.
You now possess a British passport; qualify for the old age pension.
Your mother is buried in Ireland.
Your husband is buried in Poland, known as Russia in recent maps.
Your brother has finally settled in Montreal.
Your sons went to Malaya to fight bandits; went to Africa; went to Canada.
Your daughter breeds pigs in Cornwall writing verse in a foreign tongue.
Their letters tell you of crocodiles and apes; of great elephants perfectly
     still guarding their tusks in wild places;
Of deep winters and huskies and the song of the huskies pitched in a
     minor key;
Of kingfishers and seagulls and the tides of the surrounding sea, until you
     almost forget the streams of your childhood.
You understand the language of your in-laws; of yours they have now
     mastered ‘tak i nie’.
Your grand-children (and one is a cripple) do not speak your mother-
     tongue;
     but they have learnt to call your ‘Babcia’ which means ‘grandmother’.
This is one of your happiest words.

Sometimes you are amused to have such a mongrel family.
Sometimes you think ‘this is very strange’.
Sometimes you get muddled which language applies to which.
Sometimes you still take to church your native Missal; but seldom now; and
     only by mistake.
You have said that you dream in English.

Until the age of forty you have never entertained a divorced person in your
     house.
Until the age of forty you had not known the word ‘homosexual’ — yet you
     were civilized and broadminded and not unduly sheltered.
Until the age of forty you had never been short of money; then a friend
     said ‘beggars are not choosers.’

You have never missed church on a Sunday.
You have never been to a psychiatrist.
You have never said or thought ‘I could not care less.’
You have not allowed your suffering to become a mental obsession.
You have considered sin to be the greatest evil.

You are now an old woman of great beauty, strong and serene, at home
     with the elements, and as it were used to taming foreigners, birds and
     squirrels;
And although — unawares — your face drifts off into layers of sadness,
This has only been known to happen when gates are shut after children,
Or when, in between courses, a door bangs and bangs in the draught and
      all of a sudden
There is nothing whatsoever to say.