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

You had to get a key to open it. In the cool
Interior your blood was racing, looking for
The secrets of mantelpiece or drawer.

Once the door was quietly locked, I was shut in,
Back among the photographs of forebears,
Devoutly attending this most private altar.

That was where the priest robed for the Stations:
The hiding-place of accordion and saxophone,
Of cattle certificates and papal marriage blessings.

We spent one whole year hiding out on the farm,
Fleeing the polio that was rampant in the City,
Wasting the legs of children in the streets.

Now in that country parlour I am seeking
Something else: that tie we have with the past -
To bring back to the light its blinded citizens.

They all said I looked like my mother’s father,
And here’s his wedding: cold as the marble shelf
In his bone-collared, high-necked shirt, and my bent nose.

And here’s Paddy ‘The Russian’ Murphy from Sliabh Owen
Who hadn’t the remotest interest in farming,
Whose ear they held a gun to in the time of the Tans.

Not that he ever did any act of daring.
He was delicate, and more interested in poetry
Of the Nation’s kind from the nineteenth century.

The Kilmichael ambush happened at the far end of the parish;
I used to fancy it was my grandfather who provided
The Volunteers’ bucket of tea the night before it.

It wasn’t actually; he was too far away.
But people on the run often slept in the settle,
And once the house was cleared for a military court.

My small moments of history; my household gods; my myth,
Revisiting the parlour for my benefit, so now I know
My constituency is the nation of the small townlands.