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

They say, (they, the mysterious weather people,) they say,
(But who are they?) Where do they live and have their being?
Are they here, on the same planet? Or are they elsewhere?
However, they say there is to be a brilliant moon tonight,
that it is to be bigger and larger than for many years.
Why, I wonder, they didn't really explain why. Something
to do with the Solstice, but we've had the Solstice before,
haven't we? For millennia, so why now I'd like to know,
why now, on this hot, humid, sweating night the moon
should suddenly decide to make a special guest appearance.
No doubt clad in gleaming silver and hallmarked year dot.
Silver shoon as well like the poet said, I shouldn't wonder.

However, I would dearly love to see it in its extreme glory,
I get up from my desk, go to the window, pull back the curtains.
There is a black, blank sky, I wait for my eyes to adjust,
still nothing, only a very faint light on the low horizon,
but no moon. The window faces South, I try to think
where the moon will be on this night. It's no use,
astronomy deserts me. I leave the room, I run downstairs,
the dogs leap up, we go, their paws padding, I on bare feet
into the sleeping garden. I stand on the lawn, head bent back
seeking and searching in all that high wide air for the moon.

It isn't there. There is only a dark blue, evenly polished sky,
a sky one would be grateful for on other nights, but not tonight.

                   Tonight they had promised me the moon.