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

     “You never take me on your trips any more!” - “Look!” - “I see a dark desert harmoniously intersected by endless walls.” - “But the roads?” - “The roads are on the tops of the walls.” O dark, lost roads: we are in China.

     The blind horse put at my disposal for my journeys was a former workman who had broken his legs and had tried in vain to take up the trade of roofer again. He spent his time watching houses being built. Then he had become blind and finally a horse. When I was a farm boy at Pohu’s he was devoted to me and when my bicycle was stolen during the harvest of 1900…he suggested I should travel with him. That was how we came to the Mirror Town where I lived the story of my loves. I think I can sum them up in one or two lines: a woman I met in this Carnival town was changed into a Library and when I knew all the books in the Bagario Palace by heart, in order to possess her, she became a woman again. And what a woman! She wanted to be a great film star. All the ducats I earned with my memory went on salaries, dinners, flagons of wine, clothes, pocket money. Come on, come on, accept. Alas! I consciously rushed into the secret night of jealousy. She took away my blind horse, which brought her back to me exhausted, tired of enjoyment, disillusioned, insulted. As may be well understood, we forgave each other everything.

     “Let’s go and live in your native land,” she said. There were three of us on the blind horse: the third was myself as a farm boy.

     When we came to Pohu’s farm, there was no farm any more, but a large sign bearing the words: Tourism Aviation. “What competition,” said the blind horse sadly, stretching out on the grass. He had to be pricked before he would set out again.