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

We met in a bar after fourteen barley wines, I was too drunk
                 to face anyone, retreated into car interiors.
My friends made the streets flash past the windows, I spewed
                 on the backseat, never learned to drive.

I had seen her face. No matter how much I swallowed I could
                 never again be drunk to the core.
I would attempt blackout by juggling the poisons, I achieved
                 only grand nausea. Disgust.
At the centre of my panic she was calm, frozen. I thought
                 I had invented fear.

We did not always meet in bars. Whenever I was alone she
                 would come to me so I could not stand to be alone,
So I could not stand the look of the room, its corners
                 crowded with uglies, the way the curtains crept up a
                 sudden gust of wind and sucked back into the window space,
The way the ceiling arched and fell back again with a sigh
                 or the whole room slipped out of focus. I guessed
                 she was in my eyes, adjusting my vision.
She stepped out of the wall or reached up for me from the
                 mattress.

I do not speak of madness, I could handle life’s petty
                 transactions. I never screamed in public.

II

Days, often months passed, she would not be with me. I would
                 sleep late and read psychology;

Order my life, leave no time for ecstatics or depression.
                 I filled my rooms with recorded music, my journeys
                 with newspapers, parties at the weekend, debts to pay,
I seldom thought of her.

Then, without warning, the light would grow intense. I felt
                 a shiver as she placed a cold hand on my shoulder.
I would feel the skin tighten, fit close to my fingers, see
                 the bone beneath the skin and know she was with me
Whichever way I turned. In daylight always behind me, watching
                 over my shoulder,
A pale shape running ahead at night, half hidden, moving through
                 the trees like a scent of resin;
Never leaving so much as a crushed blade of grass to witness
                 her passing.

Reminding me always of her pale inhumanity, her lack of
                 earthly reality.
I saw this as a personal incapacity for life, or for love;
                 I thought I had created the shadow of death.

III

I read all the adverts on the tube, kept myself clean,
                 made a kind of pact with my fear.
I slunk about like a whipped cur, still watching for signs.
                 I saw none, I saw nothing.
The sky became battleship grey, on spring mornings, the only
                 sounds I heard were of metal on metal, metal on
                 concrete, rubber on concrete.
The air was greasy one day, then it was acid.

I saw a million faces that bore no sign of life, everyday
                 I saw them queuing for buses, queuing for taxis,
                 queuing for an evening show at the cinema.
I had begun to see death, walking like a man.

I noticed my own face in the mirror, I had begun to assume
                 the glazed eye, the collapsed look, the vacant expression.
I was horrified, I was angry. I accused her, complained
                 of my ruin
But she was not with me, I had called her death, she’d gone
                 yet death was with me. I saw death everywhere, I was
                 obsessed.
He sucked his way in through my brain and infested my systems,
                 when I passed water I saw blood, when I drank tea
I tasted poison, I saw that meat is dead, wouldn’t touch it.
The one I had called death had left me. I saw I had named
                 her falsely.

IV

I searched for her, retreated from the company of men, prayed
                 her forgiveness. I discovered what it is to be alone.
I thought I saw her in crowded places, in the busy streets,
                 on the train that pulled away as ran onto the platform.
I searched forests and riverbanks, tried mountains and
                 mineshafts. All these places gave me a scent, a dim light,
                 a half whisper.
I cam to know what it means to be alone.

The rooms were silent, no longer any more than rooms, Dreams
                 shied away from my days. I must have stopped searching,
I am not searching now. I must have seen she could not be
                 summoned with the words I had to offer.
I kept silent, hoped for a revelation, to be free of fear,
                 free from the certainty of death.
I still had my eyes fixed on decay. I kept silent. Someone
else started speaking.

My ear was a little dull at first, I was prompted to interrupt,
                 qualify, take a position.
I had to learn a new language, to accept without judgment.

V

It is a language cannot speak, there are no words, no meanings.
It is the language of oceans, the communion of all things.
It is the language of constant bitter wind beating a tree
                 down to the death.
A green shoot that parts the earth, that shatters concrete.
The language of heavens, of perpetual change.
It is constant in motion, random in value.
It is the echo that grows ever more faint as the heart ages,
                 the pulse that frees my seed, that creates life.
It is a language I cannot repeat.

I have learned to listen for her, she speaks through a silence
                 such as this.

Etching - Stanley Engel