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 »

Peter Easter

print this page

Rotterdam

It was in a dead-end, where the wet streets
dulled with its darkness; still near enough to hear 
the cranes making their girdered geometries
along the docks; where lorries formed a smaller fleet
— bought-cheap canvas-backed ex-service gear —
parked half-up the pavements, half-up alleys

where girls grimaced while men emptied into them.
Smeared light from steamed-up windows fell upon
the cobbles like a threadbare carpet;
the door’s hot breath hurling noise, a beery phlegm.
The addled and the raddled with their eyes gone wrong.
And the Indonesian who would sooner spit 

in your soup than drop her price. There were men who swore
she tasted of diesel. It was ritual:
the owner with the latest Maigret on the go;
shattered drivers suddenly up, bawling for more
at the teasing tart dancing on the table,
her knickers dangling from a writhing toe.

Then, with the taste of old distances fading
- empty as shells full of the sea — the route planned
from morning’s carnage, as mad and bad as Byron,
they drove out of the unslept night, the degrading
filthy streets of littoral and hinterland,
the docks and the doxies, the sirens.

 

Page(s) 48

Back to top