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

NEW YORK, 22 JULY, 1958

Leaving the towers of summer New York, the upper half of the vertical city clear, the lower hidden in a gentle smog as in a Chinese wash drawing.

     Enter the New Jersey Turnpike, the greatest Roman road in history. ‘A dual limited access highway with neither cities nor highway crossings at grade.’ The engineers have thrust into the inscrutability of space. And won. This expensive ribbon, a million dollars a league, gives access to the American dream. For one cent a mile toll one grasps this Ariadne’s thread and drives painless, gearless, into the labyrinth of Lolita Land.

     We are not the first of course, and when eventually we do reach the Minotaur, it is to find he is stuffed.

     The instructions begin: Minimum speed, maximum speed, do not speed, caution soft shoulders, frost heaves, cold bridge, remove sun glasses before entering tunnel.

PENNSYLVANIA, 23 JULY

‘The world is irregularly scattered with regular objects,’ said Valery. We stop by a stream to look at butterflies feeding backwards and forwards over a tall cosmos-like vegetation.

     Turning away from this early morning mescalin scene we are confronted by an immense heap (the first of many) of discarded automobiles. Not since leaving the carcases of Central Australia have I been so moved by prostrate forms. Burnt, gutted, hoisted one above the other as if they were old jam tins, they dwarf the trees. General Motors and Charlie Chaplin between them could not interpret this heap. One day they will be dug up as Roman coins are. They all look like last year’s models.

     We stop in twilight two days out from New York. Parked by a crossroads we observe the sun setting on one side of the road, a full moon rising on the other as if each were on the end of a see-saw. Millions of fireflies flash into existence amid the alien corn.

OKLAHOMA, 27 JULY

Driving along the Will Rogers (‘World’s Greatest Humourist’) Turnpike. Stop at Afton to visit the ‘World’s Biggest Buffalo Ranch’. Outside the Buffalo steak café and Indian gift shop stand a curious collection of galloping and bucking stuffed animals. A giant moose, poised on hoove tips, seems ready to take off, using its antlers as wings. A bronco buries its head between its legs, its frozen convulsions making little difference to the triumph on the face of its small boy rider. Pretty girls in pretty dresses pose for their photographs seated on a giant bison.

     Oh Theseus don’t over expose, the Big Sky of Oklahoma is mighty bright!

     In considerable heat we pass by Tulsa ‘Oil Capital of the World’. By evening, a veined and marbled sky brings thunder and rain over Oklahoma City. The two thousand oil derricks towering delicately above the town play with the lightning and sink their steel roots into the sap of ‘two of the largest high gravity oil fields in the world’.

LAS VEGAS, 1 AUGUST

This Las Vegas is not the gambling phantasmagora of Nevada, but a classical western township in New Mexico. Each year it is the scene of one of the most sophisticated rodeos on earth, when champion cowboys gather to do honor to the original Teddy Roosevelt Rough Riders.

     Their craftsmanship is awesome. In seven seconds from dead stop, they can gallop up beside a pelting steer, lassoo it, jump from their horse in a horizontal floating Nijinsky movement, fly through the air, land on the calf, upturn it and tie all four legs together in the prescribed knot. Hooves send up an ineffable scent of herbs and dust. Man beast and full rising moon suggest, once again, that all dance is a form of grace.

     In the morning these champions will drive yet another three hundred miles, complete with horses in floats, to prove the same point in another place. And to make some more money.

NEW MEXICO, 5 AUGUST

We drive from Santa Fe to Taos, before ten o’clock passing four small furry animals squashed by the side of the road. Automobiles are too fast for the responses of these sun drowsed creatures. We pick up the next one which is still intact, heavy and warm, and put him down amongst the dry grasses with wild flowers between his paws. He is a plump and stately raccoon with long hair soft and creamy next to him and ending in tan and dark grey stripes. He has a pointed nose and dignity in death. The landscape behind is pure as a spotted lily.

NEW MEXICO, 8 AUGUST

Arrive at Taos (rhyming with house) during a dark lightning fed storm which forces columns of rain down on the superb plateau of pink earth and grey sage brush. The scent of the moist sage bounces back with the nostalgia of a cowboy novel.

     Up on the mountain of Lobo, at San Christobal, lived genius — and no Buts. It is to his shrine that we go.

     A phoenix, painted on tin, is nailed like a totem to the wall of a log cabin next to a small sunny chapel-shaped building. Inside, the ashes of D. H. Lawrence are sealed in concrete. His hat, typewriter and faded blue shirt are kept in a wooden box with flowers painted on the lid by Frieda his wife. A rose window, which is instead a sunflower, is above the gaily painted sun flowers on the tomb. Outside in the thin clear air at seven thousand feet, lies the beautiful afternoon. Birds, beasts and flowers, men and women.

GRAND CANYON, 17 AUGUST

In every civilization there is something one falls in love with. In India it is the love on temples, in Europe it is Mozart. But in America it is the continent itself. And this is true for the inhabitants also. Stronger than the lure of the almighty dollar is the bait of the mighty landscape.

     Millions of the sons and daughters of the sons and daughters of the Revolution stream over the face of this varied land every summer. Irresistible as Genghis Khan they ride in their duo-toned chariots not to conquer, but to be absorbed in what has come to be known as Zen.

     Across the Grand Canyon a rainbow arrives on time, bridges the cool air, transfixes the waiting cameras but fails to disturb a black and white woodpecker hanging upside down from a small pinetree standing on the edge of the brink. At midnight, and in moonlight, I stand at the hotel window and watch deer wandering on the grass below. In the rear of parked station wagons small children are sleeping together like silk worms.

NEW MEXICO, 26 AUGUST

Each year for three nights in a small amphitheatre in front of a permanent, rough, self-erected stage set, the inhabitants of Lincoln, a ghosting one street village in New Mexico, play out the drama of a slim buck toothed desperado called Billy the Kid.

     Billy took the Old West as he found it and shot far too many men. Because he died young, history forgave him. He fitted in with frontier laissez-faire dear to the hearts of all emerging civilizations.

     During the pageant the only curtain to rise is that of the hot night. The women wear the dresses their grandmothers wore. The men carry fire arms from the same period. Horses rear, gun smoke gets in the eyes, Sheriff Brady falls dead — and everything is real, except death. William Bonney, alias Billy the Kid, outlaw, American, rides away into the wonderful vast scented distance.

NEW ORLEANS, 31 AUGUST

A kind of sweet hot hell. The wrought iron railings, so beautiful, are reminiscent of those in Sydney. Both cities have been built not far from the sounds of slavery. Every art is a search for lost objects. What Dixieland jazz was searching for is plain to see here. This gallant and defiant cry has gone around the world.

     Every now and again jazz had a genius, all of them colored — with the exception of Bix Biederbecke. They still play here, famous names in rather crumby restaurants. They blow as if to bring down the walls of Jericho. Maybe they blew down Basin Street — if so, it is now tidied up into housing settlements. They produce a piercing kind of poetry, quite religious, acutely nostalgic; as if they were thinking of a migration of angels. Pigmented ones.

FLORIDA, 3 SEPTEMBER

Six Goddesses of Desire rise from the foam of the tropical sea. Their saffron briefs are lost among beautiful trees, reappear to float through flame, form themselves into weaving geometrical pyramids, and finally are landed by speedboats on the grass at our feet. The air is balmy, orchids are everywhere. Cinerama has made these Gardens famous, Esther Williams has consecrated them. They are glorious to look at and original things happen.

     Tired of being towed around at fifty miles an hour on water skis a young man, with deliberate and indeed insolent grace, takes them off. In a great arc, on bare feet he persists for two or three miles. It is like trying to explain about Raphael. The skill brings tears.

     Above all is the kite skier. Harnessed to his canvas frame he floats at the height of St Paul’s Cathedral. He is gently joined to a circling speedboat. His legs trail beneath him like a butterfly. He is life-enhancing.

FLORIDA, 5 SEPTEMBER

Everglades. This 1919 square miles is a floating tropical jungle. It is another of the superb areas which America has preserved for national parks. We have come to look at birds. From a launch we see half a dozen roseate spoonbills glowing, like the pinks in a newly cleaned painting, from the dark recess of a huge mangrove.

     In the Alice in Wonderland world of field glasses: egrets, ibis, heron, cranes, bittern, coot, and a rare real wild crimson flamingo. It is all a delayed homage to one of the continent’s heroes, Auduban. Delicious plants festoon the trees, and breakfast on air. Translucent palms and orchids, long legged spiders of velvet, water lilies you could hide a Volkswagen behind. Among the floating petals alligators show wooden snouts, painted fish wink up at a world they cannot enter.

     Later, going along the highway we read the sign ‘Get right with God’. Keep left with Jesus.

THE LATE SHOW. NEW MEXICO, 6 JUNE, 1959

They, you, those assembled here, are all wearing jockey shorts. So the notice which flashes across the television screen informs us. Everyone in the studio laughs, apparently without disturbing their invisible short supports.

     And now he stands before us, holding up the magic product which makes life possible. Suave, serene, benign and balding, he teases the largest TV audience in captivity. He is here to provide the happiness which you pursue. He alone holds the key to the Big Parade.

     The famous actress, her name consisting mainly of the last letters of the alphabet, precedes herself by her famous charms, these triumphant above an etiolated black dress. Her fall-out, observes our well-paid master of ceremonies, is greater than that of Dr Teller’s wrist watches.

     And so they follow. Cyclops’ glassy eye observes them all, witty, witless, earth shakers, egg breakers, strip teasers . . . ethnic pianists . . . and all those gracious living creatures who agree that Jello is more democratic than Hello.

     Outside the motel the early early desert smells like a boyhood dream. Against the God-sponsored sky are parked empty automobile carriers, their huge profiles like discarded dinosaurs.

INDEPENDENCE DAY. NEW YORK CITY, 4 JULY

The morning as pure as if it had just emerged from the creative egg. The early stereoscopic light across the river identifying the parked steamers with the precision of De Chirico’s shadows.

     An aircraft carrier, its bulging front hanging over the roadway, expensive bird-watching equipment festooned with peaceful flag messages, looks like a sophisticated toy.

     The world’s largest flag, (itself) 265 pounds of nylon and wool, floats at one end of the George Washington Bridge over the sweet Hudson which flows democratically beneath.

     Our target is the Bronx Zoo, where the wrinkled and ancient ears of the two African elephants have the texture of the most exquisite and expensive drawings. Beneath beautiful trees innumerable dark people are having relaxed picnics in the manner of a Grande Jatte Noire.

     We watch a gorilla having a shower under an adumbrated Japanese temple, listen to lions roaring with the sudden and delicious surprise of a ship’s siren, find humming birds acting as if they were suspended from a nylon thread, see boa-constrictors capable of digesting Mark Anthony, moulting condors with a wing-spread greater than the average American apartment, gnus with heads like advertising managers, tigers imitating William Blake, and two sea-planes escaped from captivity.

     We sit down for a beer and hamburger. Overhear a young boy, ‘Pop, who would I be if you hadn’t married Mom?’ His quest for identity should have been referred to the nearby Penguin Hall. Here, sitting erect amongst painted rocks, a King Penguin incubates her eggs with the motionless dignity of a saffron Brancusi stone.

     Lulled by the evening, giraffes relax among the graffiti and Independent America settles down to the long haul of producing a copper-coloured civilization.

VILLAGE SQUARES. NEW YORK CITY, 12 JULY

New York has its village square. It is called Washington. Each Sunday in the summer gather here the beautiful faces of the young. They come, although they do not know it, to celebrate the all-clear of the free world.

     Ballad singers, very much in tune, tell of the love which passeth understanding, and, if they find existence sad, they at any rate find it rhythmical. A monk-faced man with a wounded hand sings of everything except kingmaking. Twenty years ago he was famous. He is still good.

     A paper bird trembles in front of the double-bass, but a cigarette, stuck for the moment in a hole at the end of a guitar, shivers as little as the glass of water in a jet airliner. Lying on the nearby grass, a black Kepler, in Huckleberry Finn trousers, observes the motions of the stars through a cheap telescope. His brother Jonathan, almost invisible beside him, teases eternity on a bongo drum.

     A sweet Venetian singer gathers a gentle crowd of two hundred around him. Each one is dressed in an utterly different fashion. Two Irish cops, dressed the same, gently break it up. We are not to foregather. Everything that goes up has to come down, testifies a scientist before a Congressional Committee. The intellectuals, understanding at least their native language, bug out.

     And the warm night rain patters strontium on to MacDougal Street.

MIDDLETOWN, NEW YORK STATE, 26 NOVEMBER

The frozen waterfalls remind us that Father Christmas is coming soon to enjoy his fantasy. The Fall is a memory of two weeks or two thousand years ago. Once flaming trees are now systems of archetectonic twigs, churches previously hidden by foliage stand out like the white horns of cattle on a plain, children carry skates hanging like dead pairs of rabbits. The ice age prepares to conquer.

     Not long before Thanksgiving we stand on the asphalt black road on a fine, freezing Monday morning. The cars pass on their way to great cities. Across their bonnets are strung dead deer.

     In one week, one deer per person, 66,420 deer have been killed this year in New York State. Twenty-seven persons have died killing them, most of them mistaken for deer.

     One woman knitted a bright red sweater for her tame deer with the word PET in white on each side. The hunter who shot it was asked why. ‘I thought it had run through a clothes line,’ he said. Swivel chairs are set in the tops of trees and deer are shot in the way marlin are fished.

     Horsemen wear gay colours to avoid being killed. Hunters wear gay colours to enjoy killing. Licences are pinned on the back of each hunter. Dead deer must wear a purple certificate pinned each to its matted and stilled throat.

     Make way for Actaeon, coming to New York to go into his deep freeze.