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

“Schenectady?” an old friend
from the far west, with yet
a passion for etyma, asked me:
“Where does it come from? What
does it mean?” All I knew for sure
was that it's Mohawk. But it isn't.
It’s believed to be Iroquoian,
“Scag-nac-ta-de” in that tongue
meaning beyond the pine plains.”
In like but not same sounds,
“S’quan-hac-ta-de” means
“beside the open door,” a
curious shift to metaphor.

East from my back door toward
Albany I imagine plain on plain
of pine that once spread here:
tall, straight standing, swaying
forests with the smell of pitch,
scrape of needles, spongy beds —
woodlands cleared for Shaker
farm land, cabin beams, siding,
window frames, winter fires. Today
Tarmac runways cross beside the
Shaker meeting house, jets roaring
like horses above its orchard burial
ground. These cut deeply into view.

West from my front door toward
that door still open to the Mohawk
valley and beyond, the macadam is
worn thin — often pocked and torn —
to reveal underlying trolley
lines covered fifty years ago.
And nowadays our electric city is
barely lit: eyeless street lamps,
ashen factories, vacant shops
forced to weather too many hard
freezes, unseasonable thaws —
too much expanding and contracting
for its immigrants to bear.

Sometimes I'd like to close this
door but I cannot. For here I've
worked a working life, talked shop
keepers into friends, with wife
and children learned to care,
take care with — take care of —
local places, people, names.
After bending around Schenectady
like a snake in search of its tail
to mouth, the Mohawk river tends
westerly in the direction of my
inquisitive old friend and his
newer, simpler side of our land.