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

The house slides into the darkness.
The quiet air is full of his breathing.
Quick feet echo on the hard pavement
as if he were dropping stones upon stone.
To survive he knows he must keep running.
In the streetlight is his mechanical shadow.

And alone, he is racing the quick shadow
that steadily draws toward him in the darkness;
behind he hears an engine running,
a motor as functional as his rhythmical breathing,
sees yellow, then red lights jog across the stones
of a cemetery stretching out along the pavement.

A nursing home on the other side of the pavement
rests behind a streetlight, back in the shadow;
he sees headlights dancing on the stone
as a car jumps at him from the darkness,
and suddenly he is aware of his loud breathing,
feels his body moving raster, running.

His body is a quiet machine when he is running,
legs hot like pistons pounding the pavement,
heart pumping rhythmically with his breathing.
A car slides up from behind, shadows
him, as he leans out into the darkness,
slowly passing the long rows of stones.

Yellow, red lights flit among the stones,
and in his mind he is fighting, not running,
arms swinging wildly into the darkness
that spreads out before him like blood on the pavement,
as under the streetlight his quickening shadow
overtakes him, and he listens to it breathing.

He no longer hears his rhythmical breathing,
as if his hard legs had turned to stones,
as if he were no longer running,
his body becoming one with the shadow
stretching out from the streetlight on the pavement,
and the houses slide into the darkness.

Among the stones the wind is breathing.
His shadow slips along the pavement,
in the darkness the engines running.