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

     IT’S FIVE o’clock and we’re off to see the cormorants. And where are they? They’re on an island in the lake. And where’s the lake? Well, it turns out that it’s only a short walk from the Hotel Wlodnik. Sixteen of us cross the road, walk down a gravel path behind an apartment block and within eight minutes we’re at the lake side - Lake Kisajno, one of the complex of Masurian Lakes. Somewhere around here, on this flat marshy land, the first battle of World War One was fought, when a small German force routed two large Russian armies and sent them scuttling back over the frontier, never to re-emerge. But there’s not much happening right now: two boys flying a kite, couples strolling up and down, the drinks kiosk doing fine business on this late summer afternoon.

     But we don’t care about that: we want to see the cormorants. That’s what we’re here for: they’re out there somewhere on the lake. But the lake doesn’t look very big at all. No sign of any islands out there. On the left of the jetty is a green bank full of sunbathers and, beyond that, what looks like the wooden prow of a galleon jutting out over the water; but its stern, on land, is built of concrete and there are steps leading up to the restaurant inside.

     Someone blows a whistle and the boat begins to move out from the jetty. Turning to starboard, it enters a narrow channel between a small grove of trees on the left and on the right another green bank packed with sunbathers, who sit up to watch. After a hundred yards or so we turn to port, pass the end of the small grove (which must in fact be an island) and head out across the water. The shore on our right slips rapidly away, and ahead the lake suddenly opens out - it is a huge pale grey expanse streaked with long silver strips of reflection from the sky. The far shore can hardly be seen in the haze - it’s very flat and lined with small dense trees. After half an hour we can just manage to see a small hump in the distance. This is difficult to make out clearly since it blends in almost completely with the shore line behind it. Slowly, though, it grows bigger and turns into two small islands, the larger one thick with trees. From a distance the leaves are virtually black and even on a closer approach don’t become much greener - but still no cormorants. Maybe they’re out fishing.

     The boat comes even closer to the island, manoeuvres to starboard, then swings round to port behind it and into the channel between the two islands (which are much further apart than at first appeared), starting its journey back across the lake. But then we see them, the cormorants. They are here, after all. There are about fifty of them, sitting on the branches of a dozen trees, quite clearly visible because the trees they inhabit are totally devoid of leaves. The trunks are stained whiteish-grey and the ground beneath is the same colour, without any vegetation at all. The birds’ guano has killed everything. Trees nearby are quite normal, crowded together, full of very dark green leaves, the ground beneath them covered in thick grass. It’s only the half of the island where the cormorants roost that is a dead world. Even the birds themselves are lifeless, perched on their branches like small black statues. As the boat moves past them, some of our party take photographs. Though we didn’t know what we expected to see, what we have seen is rather a disappointment and we’re left, as the boat moves away from the island back towards the far-off jetty, with a taste of anti-climax. We have to ask ourselves: Why were we really so keen to see those birds?

     Right now we watch the lake ahead of us and calculate how long it might be till we reach the Hotel Wlodnik again. The sun is low over the trees lining the lakeshore, the shadows are growing longer, the sunbathers will be leaving the green banks they rested on, and we begin to think about tomorrow, as perhaps the cormorants are doing.