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

For ten years now, I’ve been pushing you up
the hill.  I’ve been chasing you back down
for just as long.  Trying my first real drink
at fifteen like all my mates, a pint of bitter
was my reward for that nervous attempt;  now it’s red
too.  So I see my nights through the lens of a wine glass.

These days, at their end, I decide it’s time for a glass
of something nice and dry, so I reach up
to the cupboard for an Argentinian red,
or something Chilean, French, or grape from down
under.  When weekends come, I treat myself to some bitter.
Draught flow cans, a proper pulled pint, or even my own home brew drink.

From the barrel to the tube to the bottle, drink
has flowed from my Grandad’s and Dad’s veins; from the cracked glass,
and into my own.  Though I hold no bitterness,
it’s the passing on of salutation to my soul;  my Mum’s up
in arms over it though - my Dad’s side have dragged me down
with their beer, she claims, but I prefer red.

Nursing vitamin B, a measure of red
wine a day’s supposed to be medicinal, yet drinking
a bottle isn’t. The salutation is down
through the green of a drained claret, where the glass
hides dreams left to die in peace, up
in the skies for gazers.  Left too long, their sweet taste turns bitter.

The stuff keeps my heart warm in bed, in the bitter
cold and dead-weight of winter.  And under blood red
cotton wool in summer, I’d booze by the clock tower, up
till all hours with my mates.  And in April I’d drink
deep from the lap of colourful melancholy.  And through wet glass, autumn’s shadow, and claret, darkening treetops down.

After he’d pushed for ages, the rock rolled down.
Did Sisyphus grow weary and bitter?
Will the green clear through the dust in the glass?
Will my driftwood of dreams harbour red?
There were nights when, like a monarch, I drank,
and felt too high, and far up.

I look down through the transparent empty, and then up
at the wide blue expanse of broken glass. There’s some more red somewhere, past the west’s bitter dying. Where no one drinks.