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

The wide, cream house
graciously welcomes sun
and visitors on its front lawn
where a puny plum tree
grows in place of the one
Keats sat under once
writing of purple ripeness
and dream, but no magic
canopies these bow-legged
branches, unclothed by leaves.

An ancient tree, its many
elbows propped by boxes.
is sprouting. It embroiders life
into the garden, kingdom of the black
and orange patched cat
who stalks birds and takes
talking to the public in its stride.

In the house felt covers
keep glass top museum
cases in a hush of dark
meant to preserve their contents,
but the looped sepia writing
has paled into crumble-thin,
discoloured paper. Keats
couldn’t breathe in these boxes.
No shadow of him sits
coughing at the highly polished
dining table and his friends’ paintings
stiffen room and passageway.
Downstairs in the spick,
whitewashed, once kitchen
where pretentious voices weave
among books and pot pourri sachets,
his eves pierce from a postcard.

What do the eager visitors
expect? An American woman
is feeding every intense
second of her tour of the house
into a tape-recorder.
Her mild husband has remained
outside to admire the unexpected
arrival of the English sun
and photograph the easygoing cat.

An Englishwoman sniffs
frail primrose clumps
but remembers the September day
when summer seemed ceaseless
as she sat here on a bench,
remembers her embarrassment
when a quiet Australian woman
with an ecstatic face, handed her
a book, begged her to read
Keats’ lines aloud.
Now she wants to shout:
his essence won’t rub off
like bark from a knobbled trunk,
can only be sensed
from the densely burning bush
within each self.