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

Once in the field, her hopes about
discovery and recognition, all self doubt,
were swept aside in concentration
on a reading of the landscape,
noting disturbance and made ground,
the calculation of best entrances.

Then, having stumbled on the unlooted tomb
she focussed in to careful sifting
of loose soil, to drawing and recording data,
on the demands of preservation,
curbing anticipation to slow disciplines
of a meticulous routine.

Days afterward, regarding an untampered
coffin lid, she had already sketched
her first comparisons with previous finds,
associated cultures. Painstakingly,
as they revealed the mummified remains,
she measured, annotated, listing
minutiae of grave goods, scarcely
calculating theories it might change.

Yet she had not anticipated that
this burial, drawn out of its cold bed,
would be a woman’s. Only then
did she indulge herself in speculation -
tribal mother, priestess, warrior queen?

After all finds were packed for transport,
loaded with what protection they could give
for changing temperatures, humidity,
then there was space to let her mind
begin to run on lectures, conferences,
papers for learned journals, maybe
the prospect of some film...

Until they heard a strangeness in
the pilot’s voice, saying they should stay calm
- then everybody heard the bang, and all
her consciousness dissolved in panic,
flooded with guilt of sacrilege,
of desecration, terrors of a witch’s curse.

Long after their safe landing, she now speaks
in terms of presences, ancestral spirits
who persist in their cold local heaven.
In her professional discourse she pays
due respect, hoping that their intrusion
may be justified in what it brings to light.

Yet, she will surface from her sleep
sometimes, and find that she is whispering
‘Forgive me, Lady, plundered mother, O forgive...’
into the darkness of a wakeful night.