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

A golden hour of evening at home,
The stucco opposite sponges the light,
The cracked façade blushes for better days,
Last of the sun, tomorrow never comes.
Arterial roads yield the mobile mass
End of a perfect day, whose chariot
Running in fast cars tail each other home.

Torsos stick through a family saloon,
A many-headed monster with the dog;
The leggy kids erupt grown-up and race,
Lemmings the hoardings redirect and style.
Retentive parents chase the tableau peace:
Do people still grimace and say cheese, please
To con themselves by an autumnal hearth?

Even in this dead end you can’t escape
Voracious roaring of their cavalcade,
Poor cousins of the golden tourist horde
Out for a day off routine daytripping
Gingerly into unexpected sun.
The elder god, we shall see darkly now
Through engines’ loud diaphanous veneer.

And when the first car homing in chez nous
Nuzzles the cul-de-sac, the last release
Impinges my brown study: nagging croon,
Idyllic babyhood, paradise week,
Gawky boy — next shot — paddlin’ in the rain;
Out on champêtre margins chancing it
For shabby dreams and minor irritants.

We shall not see the sun go down upon
Our chrome scaled tail, feedback to littered drunks.
They comb the royal parks, who picks me up?
A penny in his cap to buy me wine
And where have all the flower children gone
Long time no see, where can we drift dog days
The weather making holiday alone.

‘Summer suns are glowing over land and sea.’
Sunday school lyric covers up scorched earth.
Over the park the roaring shades, cool kids
Start to dream brassy spring’s green paperchase.
Ah how the fino light works wonders for
The rundown system, dingy threshold, fear
Broaching fresh days as best we may, and long.