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

I’ve crept away for an early supper from the
queer studies conference and made my way across 
                          Waterloo Bridge without
             noticing the view, still spitting feathers,

incensed by the complacent turd at the session
on ‘queer pedagogies’ who wittered about his 
                          students as ‘ignorant 
             amateurs’ taking part in ‘a drama

they don’t know they’re in’. No wonder this bastard gets
the negative student feedback he’s complaining 
                          so huffily about, 
             implicitly fingering the lot of

them as homophobes, the gay ones no less than the
rest. Amateurs they may be, and ignorant to 
                          boot, but they seem to have 
             got the measure of this professional.

Having safely crossed the Strand at the traffic lights
I slip into a lighter daydream, sweet nothings 
                          on the tattooed boy from 
             San Francisco who wrapped his arms around

himself while shyly speaking the language of high
theory as trippingly as if he were just 
                          spinning some good-natured 
             gossip about an absent special friend.

Waiting for my meal, I’m distracted from Vasko
Popa’s Collected Poems by a prosaic 
                          drama only one of 
             its participants knows he’s in, although

it’s clear he wants to attract the attention of
another: the waiter has taken a shine to 
                          the pretty blond boy who’s 
             brought his even prettier blonde girlfriend

for an early dinner before the theatre.
Busy as he is, in a hurry from table 
                          to table, or between 
             the kitchen and the customer, he keeps

making detours to the couple, offering them
more to eat or drink before they’ve finished what’s on 
                          the table in front of 
             them, addressing his attentiveness to

the boy but having to accept the politely
dismissive replies of an unfortunate fate 
                          in the shape of the girl. 
             He’s stockier, darker, more muscular

than the object of his pressing need, but about
the same age, nineteen or so. I can imagine, 
                          as the waiter does, the 
             two of their bodies in conjunction like

an auspicious alignment of planets, pale and
smooth alongside darker and hairier, the one 
                          opposed to the other, 
             their disparities in perfect balance.

But the same smile the waiter bestows on me for
the joyful moment when he delivers my meal 
                          the boy has ignored or 
             simply overlooked, again and again,

immune to its undoubted glamour in the face
of his girlfriend’s composure, and by the time they 
                          get up to leave, that smile 
             has changed into a disappointed pout

– if only the silly kid would just notice it –
more seductive still. Life goes on, of course, and so 
                          does waiting, so that by 
             the time he brings me my coffee, my waiter

has cheered up and is chattering away as if
in that brief season of obsession he really 
                          had the boy, held beauty 
             in his hands and shaped a memory so

detailed and precise as not to need preserving;
or else, so busy, so happy, so open to 
                          the possibilities 
             of a lifetime, he’d simply

forgotten the existence of that lovely youth.
Back in my hotel, I imagine Socrates, 
                          the day’s discussions done, 
             lowering himself wearily on to

the desolate narrowness of his pallet, and
sighing: Those boys, those boys! They’re pretty enough and 
                          all that, but when it comes 
             down to it, such ignorant amateurs.