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

At seven of an evening
two shadows meet.

It is a young August,
hung with tattering cloud
from a moody June,
but breathing sun
on severe privet,
on cattlegrids that lock
stubbed iron
on a far, rectangular hell.

The shadows ripple
against old stone,
as a waterfall might dream its double,
as an intermittent sky
might write itself wetly down.

They take a baffled delight,
this being the longest moment
they have lived loose of their keepers.

One has learnt a man s laugh
and plants its feet so.
Speaks richly of good weather
coming in from dare,
of a railstrike leaving all Mayo,
trippers and haulage, high and dry.
The county, it says,
is become its own island,
drifting beyond the catch
of the Fastnet light.

Other talk, too: this hurling tragedy,
that dance come Saturday night,
and some guy from below
prinking himself already,
lotion and gel, an unknown thing--

which sets the listener to laugh
like pebbles gathered and shaped
womanly: ‘So, so,’ it repeats,
but straightens also, knowing
it must have a ready step
back to its encumbrance.

They both know--but first
they reach together
and smooth heads
as in some farewell
divined by the last pair
dying from this world.

Then a bell’s chuckle,
green and replete;
they peel away,
are boots and courtshoes
drumming the street from their soles.

A sapling agitates
where they stood;
a rag of a dog wanders
from a smoked room
to the head of the street,
whimpering, twisting
as if in search of an owner
it does not yet know.

A bird flies the top
of its migratory arc,
spooling telegraph wire
from its belly,
calling ‘gel, gel, so, so,’
dropping each sound
like nesting curls and splits of grass
on the ashen camber.