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

"It is before you cross a frontier that you experience fear." 
                                                                               Graham Greene
 

Now he is out on the borderland where he must confront the vexed customs officer with his peevish stare.
 
Does he carry contraband? Does he carry anything of worth across? Is he maybe travelling on doubtful documents?
 
His underwear is frayed, so is his shirt, his coat. He wears the invisible insignia of suspicion. He is all but naked.
 
Here he is his own soiled goods. Here the latrines have been thoroughly scoured. Here there's danger in the turning of a tap.

He has left behind him - closed factories, closed football-stadia, closed shops, closed minds. He has left behind him - life as it was.

He has been too much in the bargain basement. Marvellous the things you'll find there, provided you don't look hard or deep.
 
He has closed the doors of a country behind him, and that country has now turned out its lights. He's in an interzone.
 
He's one in a line, and counting missed heartbeats. He is answering questions he can't understand that were surely intended for someone else.
 
There's a faint glimpse of light in the distance. It could be it's the rising sun, it could be there are bonfires on the hillsides.
 
If so, he wonders what they're burning - books, or men? Now he's facing yet another uniformed inquisitor.

He mumbles humbly muddled words. He wipes the sweat away from his face with a frizzled shirt-cuff.
 
Some are taken to a room, and he hears muffled cries. It may be they'll return, but he sees through the window there are waiting lorries.

They prod him, laugh, and mutter. Is he human, or a sort of cattle? Has he hidden something? Is he himself in hiding?

They laugh again at his papers. One of them looks as if he will spit in his face. Then suddenly, casually he's pushed through,

and the growls and grimaces have ceased. He's on the other side of nowhere, is in a new beginning - or new ending.

Soon he has passed the searchlights and the watchtowers. No one calls him back. It seems he's crossed the frontier.
 
He's walking down a long and winding road. The sky is dark and starless, but dawn will soon be rising in the mountains.
 
He's in another country now. He is kicking a ball into the future, and the goalmouth stretches to infinity.