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

When my mother had said good-night and gone downstairs
I decided I liked the attic, its brown-stained paper
that was maps, that was empires, that was cavalry
galloping, and the battered cupboard I opened
on an old pith helmet, a cartridge belt
a knobbly wooden club, an Indian god
waving all his arms as if his team had scored.
I took my toothbrush and my toothpaste out
across the hall to the bathroom. Then saw that the bath
was crawling with spiders, scrabbling to escape
dark and long legged and huge and fearfully agile.
Fat brown spiders spotted with white like boils
were squatting below in dispirited scraps of cobweb
with skeleton spiders gutted like scrap cars.
I brushed and rushed out. When I woke up during the night
I could hear them outside the door – the creaks, the crackings
as they shuffled about in the hall. But I needed a pee.
I reckoned the light would scare them. Switching it on
I hurried along and tried not to look in the bath.
Then soon as I’d managed to pull the chain I looked.
The spiders clambered. The window was black.
Everyone was asleep. With two hands I heaved
the cold tap open. A groan, a wad of brown water
and then a cold ferocious spraying jet
hit the near spiders. They clenched up, whirled about caught
in a whirlpool over the hole. But didn’t go down
just circled and circled, a merry-go-round.
I caught sight of a battered tube like a very long piece
of Shredded Wheat. My club to fight with. Shoving
the clambering spiders down in the rising waters
I turned the tap off, sweeping curled bodies
towards the hole, which began to suck them down.
But some of them stuck on the grill, a muddled heap
of twisted legs and bodies like tiny shits.
I clubbed them through. Then as the bath drained
others were stranded. Wet filthy browns
dotted the white and started to uncoil
and clamber about again. I turned the tap
and swept till they were down. Then stared. And saw
two filaments of leg appear at the grill
as one of the dreadful things, slow but determined
began to haul itself out. A blow, a blast from the tap
and I stoppered the hole with the bath plug. Then stood
trembling with fear and cold and sick with triumph.
The next night no spiders. Until I woke in the dark
and could hear them shouldering all around the hall
huge ghosts of vengeful spiders, blocking the space
with a sticky mess of white and spectral cobwebs.
Their sideways jaws chomped away like bailing machines,
their legs were over me like cathedral arches
as if I was being condemned. What could I have done?
Told the grown ups? They would have killed the spiders.
I lay not daring to move till I had no choice
then slipping from bed I clambered to the sill
of the window which I opened on the sweet night
and on the church tower peaceful against the sky.
Precariously poised yet as relieved
as any old soldier glad to put killing behind him
I peed into the consecrated dark.