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

     It is a busy morning on Main Street. Cars line the street, bumpers clash and people swear at one another. Inside the stores everyone is making - and losing - money. Everyone is complaining. A woman is using up her stamps buying white bread. A man with runover heels is buying a color TV on the installment plan. Young men’s hands are reaching into old men’s pockets. Horns honk. Babies cry. Mothers yell at their children.

     Then the sound of wailing comes from a great distance. It comes nearer and nearer until the voices and the motors still themselves to listen. In a few moments at the north end of Main Street, a brownhooded figure appears swinging a censer. Behind the first figure is another and another and many others advancing straight down Main Street. The mothers stand quiet. The young men take their hands out of the old men’s pockets. The storekeepers leave their cash registers. Motors shut off.

     The column of browncloaked figures moves forward. Among the people in it are some, naked except for a loincloth, and walking on their knees. The blood shines on the pavement. Others, half naked, stagger forward under the lashes of those at their backs who strike them at times with inexplicable fury, at others weakly, as if they loved those they are beating. The bitter fragrance of the incense mingles with the odor of sweat and faeces the the flagellants exude and with the motor exhaust that still hangs in the air. One figure staggers under the weight of an oaken croos twice her size. The feet of the women and men are encrusted with filth. Moans fill the air. The shoppers and shopkeepers line the edges of the sidewalks. The police stands transfixed but one officer remembers it is illegal to march without a permit. But to whom should he issue a summons? He calls the stationhouse. By the time the problem is weighed, the procession has moved far down Main Street into the residential treelined streets toward the next town. By now the column is almost out of sight, so evryone goes back to business.