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

There was a crowd; something was going on,
A party or a wedding. People came
From all around. Many of them he knew, -
A woman with a child, an old man,
A boy, a soldier. Someone rang a bell;
They filed into an empty starlit room;

Sat round a table - but there was no room
For Morgan. The old man laughed ‘Come on,
Morgan, come with me to the farm; when the bell
Rings for dinner, we’ll be back!’ They came,
In time, to a green pasture Morgan knew:
‘Here, with the quiet animals, a man’,

He mused, ‘is something better than a man, -
A creature needing neither roof nor room’.
He was ashamed to think of what he knew, -
The flocks, the herds which he had fed upon.
His gorge rose. But then the signal came,
Far off, precise, the expected dinner bell.

He was alone now. The distant bell
Was ringing - on all sides, but the old man,
Who knew the way back, had gone; what came
And guided Morgan to the starlit room -
A lamb - seemed the appropriate guide. ‘Come on’,
The guests called, ‘we’re waiting’. Then he knew

Some marvel was expected of him, knew
All eyes were on him; entered, and the bell
Stopped ringing, and the stars above looked on.
And there, back at his side, the old man
Had re-appeared. But this time there was room -
The place of honour - for Morgan when he came.

To the seat on his other side the woman came.
They set the lamb before him, and he knew
He would have to carve. Everyone in that room
Tasted the flesh. Then - clear as a bell -
The woman’s voice, ‘That was my child’, pealed on
In Morgan’s head…He fled, a hunted man.

He woke, but still the bell pealed. He knew
This nightmare would go on when daylight came:
‘No room’, it shrieked, ‘for you, the hunted man!’