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

Poetry Library Southbank Centre - The Poetry Library housing the Arts Council Collection at Southbank Centre

« Previous item
Contents of this issue
Next item »

Michael Henry

print this page

Ice Cream Seller

Only you could change from an Italian ice cream seller
to the American Mid-West
just by taking off your jacket.

I should take you to our Mid-West.
We could walk to Single Tree, past
the abandoned trailer with a net
and scarifying hook the gorse-raiders left,
that and their tyre-treads swastika'd in the mud.

And did they also abandon
the table and chairs in the gorse
where you could open up your hamper
of Italianisms: piacevole, pistachio, pentimento?
Where I could point out Dry Bottom, Watery Bottom
and the escarpment of the dead, Belas Knap.

If a storm came howling over the common,
as it sometimes does,
you could play the Fool to my Lear,
winking in the eye of the wind.
If not, you could put your jacket back on
and all the lost children would come running, come running.

 

Page(s) 28

Back to top