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

Can you still do it, d’you think, Jimmie bach? the old
quarryman shouted.

             Shy and anxious we should be embarrassed,
I stood there and wriggled my holiday sandals
clear of the grey sludge that coated the shed floor.
Overhead, pulleys were slapping and whirring, their leather
belts turning cutters whose angled blades spun like
a lawn-mower’s, slicing the thin plates of blue into roof-tiles.

Taking his place once again at the work-stool, Dad cradled
a paving-stone-thick slab up to his thigh and,
aligning cold chisel to top edge’s centre,
with deft but unhurried firm taps of the hammer
scored his long line the desirable thickness.
Then, finding the right spot and angle of entry,
rapped hard and unflinching, twisting his wrist round
to force the already widening gap that burst open
with noise of milk-bottles on chill morning doorsteps.
Some things you never forget! he laughed with a shared grin.
Hard winters, he added, first thing on a Monday,
we had to boil water to unfreeze our chisels
from where they had all frozen fast to the bench-top.

That never happened, my uncle conceded, a mile underground but
down there we had worse things. My father drilled holes for the blasting
and sometimes I’ve seen him, so cramped at the slate-face,
bracing the drill with his forehead while gaining a purchase
with both hands and feet. Worst of all was the dust, though,
but none of us bothered, at that time.

They’d bathe by the fire in a galvanised zinc tub,
dress up again in white shirt and starched collar
and, dark-suited, stride to rehearsals for concerts
that one of the many Male Voice Choirs was giving.
Singing was balm for their throats and their lungs then.
But, cleaned up as well, my Dad was much fonder
of billiards and snooker at Church’s snug Guild Hall.

The quarrymen singers both expired rather slowly
of lung complications, their doctors recorded.
The snookering dresser of roof-slates died quickly
of simple heart failure while I lived in England.

The quarry is now a big tourist attraction,
not that I’ve ever paid it a visit,
some things, as he said, being never forgotten.