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

It seemed that from the beer-tent I escaped
Down some profound depression, where they kept

Silent the damaged and the down-and-out.
A sergeant rang the bell for them to eat,

It being the hour appointed; but the failures
Who shuffled from the darkness on all fours

Had burned away their appetite for solids
And only a couple accepted watery salads

To sip at on their disinfected bunks.
These were the veterans of such bloody banquets

That none could bear their own reflections now;
'Hey, Soldier!' I called to one I seemed to know

Who was sitting helpless in his vest and pants
Over a tray of flat insipid pints:

' — Didn't I see you when you were so pissed
On the road here, that a mug of whisky passed

Straight back out of your nostrils as you drank?
Tell me, how did a soldier get so drunk?

And how did you manage later?' Out of luck
He shed his numbered shorts and made me look

At something which in health I had not seen,
Nor wished to see, stitches so crudely sewn:

'After' he mouthed 'that dreadful race — I lost,
I think, or won — came either first or last —

Warned to protect myself from further harm,
I sheltered in the dream I had of home,

And there, in front of children I inspired
With stories of a life spent in the sport

(We were clinging to each other for support
At the fireside, chatting after a quiet supper)

With a loud noise the shit larruped down my leg.
Now every Christmas I raise half a lager

To absent friends; and absent is the word,
For nobody loves me in the Drinking Ward

Or cares to see me in this state again —
All hopes of joy, all thoughts of children, gone.'

(I carried news of this heroic drinker
Back to daylight, handed in my glass.)