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

‘Thirty,’ the doctor said, ‘three grains each one,
That’s quite a lot of sodium amytol!
Five . . . ten more minutes and the job was done,
Just why do you think she wished to “end it all”?
Ah, well, it’s not my business. You’ve her things?
Damn lucky that I had my stomach pump —
Take them up to her if the Sister rings.’
I thanked him and agreed the night was damp,
Then flicked through Punch and waited the event;
It was, you see, no time for sentiment.

Her things, though, had been much in evidence
Back in the flatlet when I searched through drawers
To find a nightgown (blue is for romance)
And her remembered hairbrush, through such tears
As in these situations must be shed —
(It is the cause, my soul, it is the cause)
I found her slippers underneath the bed
Where we had . . . where she drained her bitter cup
In solitude the night before this night;
What mattered was to pack her suitcase up,
Put out the light, ‘and then put out the light’.

‘So,’ the nurse said, ‘you’ve come. She may go out.’
I noticed that my shoe-lace was untied,
But though some words climbed up into my throat,
Found none appropriate to suicide;
I took her arm, though, like a helpful friend
And led her downstairs to the waiting car,
Thinking, our game we do not understand,
Nor who is playing it, or what we are.
Her landlord came in time, and that was luck.
I changed the gear. Who drives behind my back?

Her friend was waiting for us at the flat
With tea and so on. This I had arranged.
Knowing too well such passion spun the plot,
Death was its end, unless the scene was changed,
What could I do but tear apart the script
Which made quite clear the end of our impasse?
As, kneeding with her hands, she sat white lipped
~here are some shadows which take long to pass)
Her friend poured tea, and slowly, drop by drop,
In solitude we drained our acid cup.

We had exhausted words as well as touch,
Therefore at half past ten I said goodbye,
Breaking the silence with a lifted latch,
To join once more my own identity.
That night the chilly street was not as dark
With its faint lamp as my intelligence,
And since more suited is a question mark
Than a full-stop to human ignorance,
The blue stone I recall on her left hand;
Just what it means I do not understand.