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

Westering out of night into morning of unending-seeming process

of coming back from a family wedding
which was not a holiday only another working cold
under snow-heavy skies case of pretending
to be friends with strangers just as it should be

stopped off in Holland and Amersfoort under sun
he liked small old walled the inner city
flowers everywhere a canalside market leading
from gate to gate though it was she

spotted the dredger hauling bikes in piles
from the water still he liked the
fair the market she wanted
to go on train to Amsterdam

she wanted to be moved by bare boxrooms of Anne
Frank’s diary-writing hideout he said too
touristy really feared emotion-overload

or letdown or feeling nothing whatever preferred
bookhunting them after when they remet Van Der Valk’s
informer-meeting pub the Three Blackbirds Dri Schwartzes
shut and the next one over the bridge empty

bar them and the dog stank and kept peering
out where the letterbox was on a canalboat doubtless
a drug seller and on and on the canalside
walk growing more and more identical more

and more houses straphanger-squeezed narrow and
she never said she was freezing cold and wished
to be on the tour boat and every place they passed
could have been in the warm one or the other said

too crowded or too dead and finding at last
old church with toytiny houses huddled
between its buttresses found
everywhere whores half-bare half-glitter and

even weightlifter-painted gay brothel public show
full of figures posturing in window as new Telecom tootler
symbol and this too blamed for that since he had been
n years ago a works outing the red light zone

had spread to half the tourist sights of town and at last
past Dromedaris Tower now too dim in sunsetting
to photograph its picturesqueness to the station
for getaway to find bar there full only of

people and their drinks could have been probably
overcharged and anywhere wanting only to get away
from here and back in Amersfoort for the late night
connection in a small bar near the station

found office party just like England on
a Friday evening celebrating someone
marrying or leaving or otherwise
moving down life’s line

towards the nice-to-nasty time both know they got      wrong