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

Holding in my right hand your Japanese roses, I am climbing a very tall ladder to the top of an immensely high tower. As i step off the ladder into the small round room at the top of the tower a flock of black birds fly out of the tower in all directions with a wild flapping of wings.

     Although the turret room has narrow windows from which it is possible to see out over a vast area of flat countryside, no light penetrates the room. It is as if the windows allowed sight to go out while permitting no light to come in. There is no glass in the windows and it is easy to lean out and look down from the dizzying height to the ground below.

     I have come to give you your Japanese roses and although I can see nothing in the thick darkness I am certain you are in the room, even though you do not answer when I speak to you.

     Still holding the roses in my right hand and with my left stretched out in front of me, I walk round the turret in an ever narrowing circle.

     When I reach the centre without having come upon you, I stop and think. I am still convinced that you are there and it seems to me that the only way in which you could have escaped discovery would have been by walking round behind me, by following in my footsteps. I therefore quickly turn and retrace my steps in an ever widening circle.

     I reach the wall of the turret without having found you.

     Discouraged by my failure and depressed by the musty odour of this airless room with its soft earth floor, on which my feet drag soundlessly, adding to the eerie and oppressive nature of the whole situation, I resort to a stratagem.

     Returning the centre of the room, I place the roses on the floor, indeed I thrust their stalks into the earth in the hope that they may possibly take root and grow.

     Then I descend the ladder, which I take away with me, and leave the tower.

     My purpose is to return the following day and look for the roses. If they have moved I shall know that you are, or have been, in the tower. If they are in the same place I shall know that either you have not been in the tower or that you have seen through my ruse and have carefully left the roses where they are - or that you have simply failed to notice them.

     Then I recall the flock of black birds that flew from the tower as I entered, and it occurs to me that if I do find that the roses have been moved, they might well have been moved by these birds and not by you.

     Thinking the matter over, I decide my only hope is that the roses will take root and grow and that in due course a mass of yellow roses will thrust out through all the windows in the grey stone tower and that you, even if you are outside the tower, will see this ecstatic vision and understand its message.

     Everything, then, depends on the roses.

     The following day I return to the tower, hoping to see yellow roses bursting from its windows. Instead I discover that the whole of the top of the tower has turned into one huge red rose, into and out of which enormous bees are flying. As to how this phenomenon came into being and what it signifies I have no idea. At least it proves without a shadow of doubt that you cannot possibly still be in the tower, if you ever were. It leaves me, however, quite uncertain how to set about searching for you and now, regrettably, without the Japanese roses I had hoped would help me in my quest.