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

I was at school with him,
that Will Shakespeare,
carved his name on his desk,
pissed on it to make it shine,
edited a magazine called Nova
the name of our river spelled backwards -
he said we should always remember
that words were the way you told lies
and got out of a walloping -
he got us to compare our penises
and said one boy’s was Small Latin
and another one’s Less Greek,
he kept us entertained with faces
and wrote endless essays
when he wasn’t courting.

When he went to London
I was really sorry. Or was it Lancashire?
Anyway we heard of him in London,
then his Dad got into trouble about church
and his Old Woman sulked at home
and we had several discontented winters.
One day I met him in the High Street,
he seemed a bit furtive,
said the chap loitering on the corner
was a government spy,
‘haven’t I got trouble enough with Coriolanus?’
I loved his stories from the classics
but it only made him gloomy,

‘You know what Marston told me,
all Penelope did in Ulysses’ absence
was fill Ithaca full of moths -
why come back when the moths at home
are never going to change to butterflies?’
I showed him a review in the local paper,
‘Stratford author’s sour-note sonnets!’
He wasn’t interested and talked
about the price of real estate.

But he was big in London,
you heard about it even here.
And all the time he bought up property
and made himself a gentleman
like his father had tried but failed to do.
Then he came home, old and tired,
saying if life’s race were run from eleven to ninety
he was at the ninety end
though all of forty-eight.
Once at an Open Day he said mysteriously
‘Congratulations, you have just invented
a new art form - let’s call it Local History
and hurry it along to Heritage.’

We listened when he talked to us,
I used to love his high haranguing
but it died away. He died too,
quite suddenly. Managed a good tomb
before the altar and no digging-up
and stowing in the ossuary. I’ve kept a note
he passed me under the desk once
during a long grammar lesson.
‘No man may know a neighbour closer
than his own defeat. The unfolding star
calls up the shepherd. Soon there’ll be
nothing of the world to listen to.’