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

     . . . no one’s coming. It’s 4.30 again. Dennis stands by the embankment railings. You have to go back, remember. We fly down the coast. It’s a winter evening and I’ve got the book open on my knee. You can see sharks flitting beneath the surface of the water and rain dripping off the windows. This breeze turns pages for me. Small black boats move out near the shore line. The train sways and rocks through the tunnel, through the window nearly all you can see is trees. But Dennis is looking down at the brown river water. The boats are pointed at one end and three pigeons lumber about in the juniper branches . . .

     . . . out of the tunnel, past the dip in the hedge beyond which you can just make out the green iron railings bordering the park, and old prams surfacing from the mud at low tide, beyond the boats four earth-coloured huts, and the darkness, a sparrow flies directly at the window then veers off right, it’s summer but further out the ocean is unfurrowed. The train rumbles and rocks, a child shouts, a jet flies past and gaunt leopard-coloured land stretches away to the left, the people holding on to the straps knock together like peas in a box. Beyond the railings the tops of the branches are swaying gently so there must be a wind somewhere yet there’s a line of buses held up on the bridge and an old flood of lava pours down into the sea beyond Shuqra into the wind . . .

     . . . yes, there is a wind but if I weren’t here where would I like to be? no answer, the lava rolls on into deeper water, heavy as dough, and the people are rattling together but there’s no other evidence, nothing moving, and Richard is wearing a new pullover today and now we can see the craters with their rimmed edges scattered among the lava folds but the rumble stops suddenly though apart from the railings there’s so little green out there. The book won’t keep still. To the north, already, is the high level of Kaur, the points click and clack under the wheels, I can’t see the words anymore, they’re like an unbroken wall with concrete ramps rising up fast now on each side. There are only two laurel bushes but Dennis ignores them and walks towards the football ground at the far end of the park holding a handkerchief in his left hand and, afterwards, the shore flattens again for many miles, we’re passing between high-Edwardian red-brick flats that peer up above the concrete ramps on either side, the leaves don’t grow here any more, the yachts bob up and down and the bay of the Fish-Eaters is littered with empty heaps of shells. On either side there are lighted windows now, just branches of bare, black trees, but is this important? Even while you think, the mountains are coming nearer, they’re very close, you can’t see the river beyond thetrees where Dennis is watching a Thames barge moored out at the centre of the tide, out there where a white table-land of limestone meets black volcanic ridges and you can’t see inside . . .

     . . . inside the boathouses are locked, sands drift over the landscape as I stare through the smeared glass, thirteen years old, it’s all hidden down there now among the mud, the Canada geese strutting around near the pond, the sand piled up high in blinding dunes just where the Meifa’a wadi seeps down to the sea, and all the windows are like little theatre stages, a single scene poised in each, an occasional tug hooting out on the river. Obviously, Dennis is waiting for someone, flicking the change in his pocket, the sand covers the ancient lava floors just so that you know it s there, as Barbara walks through the park gates and Bal Haf’s three small square towers face west on a hook-like bay, like dollshouses, the curtains in here hanging straight down to the window-ledge . . .

     . . . the gates, the window-ledge, yes, the sand, she’s holding a large brown-paper parcel and beyond the bay a lava ridge runs forward in snouts and I, well, I’m waiting for this moment every night, once they were dark maroon, so I close the book and watch the young wives pushing prams, and an empty crater standing there like a buttress. Those tiny, frozen tableaux sustained me but now the light has faded their edges, as if at a signal, the pigeons lumber into the air and another inlet is formed, a quick flash of life, their breasts quivering nicely above the pram handles as they walk, the sky over the trees pale grey while two children scream. There are no ruins here because there was no water, mini-seconds of lives passing in each frame, but there is a streak of blue higher up above the stripes of grey, I can see it now . . .

     . . . and see beyond a bay opening up, a giant amphitheatre of volcanoes and drift sand, in each rectangle a different kind of life, it’s as if the blue were peering through a slit and in ten minutes time Barbara will meet someone by the bandstand and inside it there’s another crater buttress at the water’s edge, wondering what it was like , though at least this gives an appearance of recession, I don’t know who it will be and neither does she, and markings like walls upon it, a man by a table pulling upon his braces, the whole scene could otherwise be on one plane only, there’s the sound of a helicopter flying low and fast over the river, and you can see theminute square town of Bir Ali and a boy with a ruler watching the rain, if you look too quickly you might not notice anything at all, but Barbara’s looking up now into the tree-tops seeing . . . 

     . . . two islands lying in water misty with sunlight, two people eating, wondering what is going to happen next, two of the wives laughing and talking together, one black and the other white with bird-droppings and then , once and suddenly, a girl dressed only in a skirt, another sparrow darting across the foreground from left to right, they’re not laughing at the trees, they serve as landmarks for Cana, her round breasts glistening with lamplight, it’s coming and going between the massed, naked branches and Barbara glances at the wives as she walks jauntily past. When we land we walk along the white beach where for many nights I remembered her dark nipples, and except for the sound of this pen scratching the paper there’s nothing else to be heard in the room, nothing, and she’s not laughing either . . .

     . . . no, not laughing, but a man shouting something behind a window, I cannot hear him though I can hear my breath now that Dennis has reached his goal, the football ground wall, crabs sliding out from beneath our approaching feet but you hear no words inside this room where the books reach up the walls to the ceiling and Dennis pauses to look back into the centre of the park where he can’t see anyone he recognises not even the three fishermen walking ahead, their fish-baskets carried on a yoke, and an old woman knitting, the wooden stool under the window, nor hear what the young wives are saying to each other, walking barefoot along the hard wet shore, past bedrooms and living rooms, the wooden struts that I hammered together last Christmas, but all the same they have pleasant legs, until finally we reach the camel park, past kitchens and bathrooms, thepiano open and waiting for someone, and somewhere else where Richard decides it’s time to go out, the odd bark or two rising up into the still air from the hunched beasts dotted on the patch of sand that’s cradled within the two prongs of the estuary that is now filling with bright water . . . . .

     . . . the water streaking thetrain windows but I can make out a factory chimney, a couple kissing by a stove, a man taking off a hat, the cactus string at me from the round-topped table under the window, one minute passing into another without a sign, as Richard stares at the reflection of his pullover in the shop fronts that he passes, and it s nearly evening now, the Yafi’i mercenaries by the guardhouse play at dice, the sun is red and swollen, nothing changes, no one remembers this . . .

     . . . this flight from time, past the green railings, only you can’t see it at first and Barbara sits down in a chair by the bandstand and opens her parcel and the past is buried beneath the sands, just that single explanatory mini-second then nothing else, but you make journeys and decisions and I wonder whether to get up off this bench, the mercenaries finish their dice game and Layard goes off to the mound of Kouyunjik. The sun’s vanishing, these pictures are never the same each night, you come in and go out, the world turns, I remember Brenda’s extraordinary hands and how he starts to dig in Mosul, the train rocking from side to side, the graves in the garden, Barbara’s put the parcel down by her feet and is wondering what to do next, he’s amazed at what he so effortlessly uncovers, nine chambers inside a month, the rain washes them flat until nothing more can be seen and remember thinking, what is it like? The young wives have wheeled their prams away unfortunately and he’s face to face with the finest achievements of Assyrian architecture and then I think, how will it be later? the page of the book turning as palaces and chambers emerge and then there’s nothing to look at any more, straining to see through the smeared rainy train window as you read the words, seeing nothing, only a smudge of smoke from a distant chimney . . .

     . . . smoking, yes, smoking, the girl crossing her legs on a station platform, only just glimpsed, speeding faster towards Acton Town, as Dennis leaves the football ground wall, the portals guarded by ubiquitous human-headed winged bulls, what do they mean? but it s too late now, he’s following a girl in very tight jeans back the way he came along the side of the river, through Turnham Green and Chiswick Park, shall I be like this later? and deep, deep down there’s a royal library too, shelves packed close with clay tablets and cylinders, but never an answer, perhaps none of this is real, the sun finally sinks below the dunes in a silent blood-red explosion over the horizon and he sees that a dazzling light has been turned full on the past and the sun, yes, smoking, the stations rushing past in the rain and only questions in my head, does it matter? and a man sits down next to Barbara and turns towards her, talking, another helicopter buzzes over the tree-tops, I close the book, the children leave the sandpit, Richard is boarding a bus and Dennis decides that he doesn’t like the girl’s bottom as much as he first thought, it’s over, those little tableaux, for another night, the train is slowing down, the seconds pass and somewhere in the spaces between them there are other moments, other happenings, what was once the darkness of history is now made clear with a spade, a word, Barbara’s conversation with the man, the flight of a single pigeon across the artificial pond, a camel coughing by the side of the filling estuary and several starlings flying to shelter in the juniper trees above the green railing beyond which Barbara and the man are standing up, the rhythmical knocking of the rail-joints beneath the wheels assumes a diminishing tempo, the muezzin calls in Bir Ali, through the window I can still see the stirring of the upper branches of the trees beyond the railings, streaks of maroon are staining the grey clouds, the cactus squatting on the table under the faded curtains is changing colours, someone whistles, and suddenly it’s 4.30 and no one’s coming . . .