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

I.
As he waits to meet his brother off the train
at the Gare de Lyon Theo notices the way
the girders interlock overhead,

their shared bearing of tension
and load like a confident hand-shake
beneath which he stands uneasy,

unsure what to make
of his brother's letters, the illness.
I need looking after. I'm coming to Paris.

Their sister's advice to leave him
to his devices. Don't let him wreck
your life as well as his own

is easier said than done.
True, he has his own worries.
But he knows his Bible.

Am I my brother's keeper?

II.
From the window of the train
his younger brother watches
the early morning steam

rise off the grey slate Parisian roofs;
he pictures the sluiced streets
of Montmartre,

the women with arms strong
as blacksmiths, setting up stalls
of dahlias - the Clair de Lune,

Rigoletto, Redskin,
the poignant, purple Requiem
clashing in the sunlit, brick stink of the city.

Will he be here to meet me, my brother?

He's aware that their sister calls him a sponge,
that his parents long for him to settle down,
find a normal sort of happiness.

He himself is bewildered
by the when and why of it;
how things went wrong for him -

how it can happen that a man
ends up able to understand
only the sight of a Parisian roof

as steam comes off it first thing;
how it is imbued with blessing.
How there is no need to look further.

His brother will explain the rest,
as he did when they played together
in the Brabant fields as boys

and smelt the same clay earth
and heard the clack of looms
through open windows,

the spinning-wheels, the laughter
of dark-eyed peasant women in white caps
trailing up the lanes into the dusk.

III.
As the train pulls in,
its coils of smoke unrolling
under the canopy of the roof,

pigeons the colours of puddles of oil
clap up with a rush.
Vincent!

Theo steps forward to hug
the lonely, anxious figure of the brother
who depends on his love.