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

I drove up early, avoiding rush-hour traffic.
Retrieved his ashes from the funeral parlour.
Fetched the house-key from Mrs Atkinson-Next-Door.
Let myself in. Perched him upon his mantelpiece.
Opened the writing desk. Found, as I’d expected,
Paperwork ticketty-boo, as he’d have put it.
Placing the will in a folder, my eye fell on
A fat exercise book, sharing a pigeon-hole
With a calculator and a foxed Thesaurus.

Quotations, in his meticulous handwriting,
18th and 19th century writers, mainly.
Comments on long-dead political figures,
Scathing, in general. Kent county cricket scores
From the early ‘50s. Occasional riddles.
Helping myself to his Scotch, I took his jottings
Out to the scullery where the light was better.
At this point, I started to register sundry
One-liners, totally incomprehensible.

Two or three to a page, randomly interspersed
Between anecdotes, shaggy-dog stories, wisecracks.
Having minimal aptitude for brainteasers
I was losing patience until I remembered
Old Man Atkinson had a Bletchley Park background.
I bribed him out of his greenhouse with Talisker.
In ten minutes he scrawled a sample solution
On an unsent funeral notification.
Muttered Amateurs. Went back to his begonias.

Darkness had fallen before I completed
My self-appointed task of decryption. A bat
Skittered and squeaked around his neglected garden.
I meditated on Nunky’s unknown hobby.
No names. No pack-drill. Precise payments where rendered.
Marks out of twenty. Places of assignation,
Bizarrely, listed in full. I thought myself calm
Until, pouring him into his downstairs toilet,
I flushed so hard I snapped the old-fashioned chain-pull.

Going home, for the first time in my life over
The alcohol limit, I instinctively steered
A complex course through town, carefully avoiding
Municipal parks and public conveniences.