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

Late rain drove them all from the stableyard.
Gina’s old thoroughbred, stiff in blue rugs,
Carla’s iron-grey Carmen (who whinnies, tugs,
Though only waist-high) snatched hay, then stared.
While jeeps, a battered van beat a retreat,
The pony trotted me through the dusk’s sleet.

Tender white glow on the circle of hills
Whirled into snow, soaked the mud from my sleeves,
Darkened the tips of the pony’s small ears.
We galloped down tracks. No sight of a bird
Or living soul met us. Icy mud blurred
Into our faces. The feeble bulb spilled

Green on the hay I crammed into her rack
From the storm of the dark. Everything fell
In the unseen mud, key, gloves, soaked towel.
Then strange windows glimmered behind my back,
My car: furred snow-soft. No stars filled the dead
Eye of the sky, blind with flake. I, too, fled.

It skimmed the slope where small houses once lay,
The first, lost village. As swift as the snow
It was a hare. It was vast. It dropped low
Into feathers of white. The great ears reared,
It bounded out of my beam, then careered
To hedge-holes, brambles, to wait for wet day.

How long is an evening? Who would have thought,
After all this, that a main traffic light
Would freeze on red; so I had to swing right
In the small town, where the snow had now thawed
To a sharp iced rain, to wander the grounds
Of dark, new bungalows, where I turned round.

Lost in a courtyard, I wrenched the wheel right.
Behind warm windows from ceiling to floor
Hunched and alert, the men watched me. I saw
One spin a wheelchair. Under their glass
Sheltered from mud and ice, soaring but fast,
White hyacinths opened into the made light.