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

Poetry Library Southbank Centre - The Poetry Library housing the Arts Council Collection at Southbank Centre

« Previous item
Contents of this issue
Next item »

Helen Clare

print this page

Gaps

You find them on terraces like this
everywhere. Square, bevelled holes
on the stone coping of a two foot wall.
The rain collects there, moss grows,
stains the pale cotton skirts of girls
who sit, waiting for the bus.

You might not know what was missing
unless sixty years before you’d looked
from the front window of your terrace
seen them, reaching tall and straight
before turning, curling, in patterns
that seemed new each day.
If you’d watched them through the seasons
had them primed, painted, protected from rust.

You’d remember how they were requisitioned -
the day they were torn out, thrown
in the back of a truck, rattled across England
to the foundries, factories and airfields.
You’d know that steel fragments litter
the fields of Europe, the deserts
of North Africa, torn and twisted.

You might never replace them,
not with wooden pickets, or coated wire
or aluminium  (how could you bear it
that clumsy fold, the rough sawn spike
the naked surface of sheared crystals).
Neither would you want to see box privet
or the tight, tight knots of the dolorous yew.

Page(s) 10

Back to top