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

Poetry Library Southbank Centre - The Poetry Library housing the Arts Council Collection at Southbank Centre

« Previous item
Contents of this issue
Next item »

Graham High

print this page

Remembering the stratocracy

In the Square, alone and shouting,
wearing medals and the vestige of a military
uniform, is one of a different density.
His mind is hardened, heavy with data,
crushed through the mesh of senses.
Undigested, it accumulates into one
unwieldy encarta of pressure.
It is as if his muffled head harbours
some black hole of infinite suffering,
whose gravitational pull is greedy for grief,
being the only currency he can count in.
Slowly formed, by that without form,
layer by overwhelming layer, the hardened
strata accumulate under his shapka,
beneath the ice cap, the peak of fur
and snow that muffle his brain.
The cold, the pain, the pressure of years
has become an insulation, welcome
almost, despite his overwhelming anger.
The snow gathers round to listen
but the last passer by hurries home.
He rails on, objection after objection,
shouting to the monument across the
square. He points accusing fingers
at the statue of a man who has been dead
for seventy years. Lenin’s bronze extended arm
is reaching back at him, but not with
menace. Not intending distant harm,
much less in comradely salute, but in a fixed
unseeing gesture of eternal dismissal.

 

Page(s) 71

Back to top