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

Tristan! Tristan!
Where is he? Damn him!
- the woman lies back on the bed.
Leaves blotch the lawn -
discolourations on old skin.
The garden furniture looks uneasy
like night-beasts caught out in daylight:
it rusts and slinters . . . .
The house -
an inauthentic backdrop,
grandiose and damp - its face pack peeling;
her apartment, an island among desolated salons,
is cluttered with screens and mirrors,
cosmetics, kimonos and globe-lamps.
A gramophone spills out vapid, masochistic vocals
and mooning saxophones,
tinged with the needle's acid hiss.

She lies on the bed,
Half-naked/slack flesh, calls
for her chauffeur - lover and dealer
who brings her morphine. Tristan!
Tristan!
                It is today
she visits the assylum. The wind is high.
(Leaves lash the car.)
It has inspired her husband
to rhetorical verse. (He has behaved well-
he does not need restraints today.)
Their son, she informs him, is marrying
a perfectly brainless daughter
of the petite bourgeoisie, and -
despite that story involving her uncle -
a perfectly conventional one. It is an act of revolt!

This place, it stinks! It stinks!
She will sell the house - sell everything!
She must pack - Tristan
is a born adventurer - she must pack.
This place stinks! She must move.
Leaves cling. Curtains catch.
Windows stick, stick. Tristan!
The car is ready. The phone rings.
She reaches for the receiver and falls.
The receiver hangs, whispers . . . .
Tristan, Tristan . . . .
                                   Tristan
waits by the car in his beautiful, white uniform.
She does not come down.
Evening falls. He waits-
a neglected statue. She does not come down.
The car horn answers itself from the boarded window.