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

Against a waterlogged, leaden grey sky, the zinc grey airship drifted slowly winking a tiny orange light. As it came closer, we saw that it was not one of the reconnaissance blimps we were used to, but a vast Zeppelin whose gondola was black and heavy as an old Thames barge. Then, as it passed nearly overhead, objects began to drop from it which glimmered whitely before thudding into the ground.

     The objects had not exploded; but still we were very cautious, and hesitated before going to root them out. When we did, we discovered that they were bones: not human bones, but big bones straight from the abattoir with scraps of flesh still clinging: marrow bones such as you could boil up for soup, or would keep a dog occupied for days on end. We no longer had a dog. It had been gunned down by people of a different persuasion, or of different nationality, or perhaps simply advocates of a different breed of animal. Who was to say? We could scarcely complain, since we ourselves slept under dog-skin blankets, though we had not killed them for the purpose. I made soup for my husband and myself.

     Families kept well apart, and people would approach one another with weapons at the ready, even though it were only to gossip. That being so, news was slow to percolate; but eventually we learned that, so far as was known, no injuries had been caused by this wanton act of charity.

     One day the Zeppelin came again; but this time it brought paper. We stood in uncommunicative groups and watched the pale leaves fluttering down, and I think everyone assumed they would prove to be public order pronouncements of one sort or another, or perhaps demands for fealty or dubious assurances of safe conduct. But in fact they were nothing but souvenir photographs of the Zeppelin itself, moored to an iron tower and decked out in little flags. I said we ought to keep one in case we were captured and questioned; but my husband said it would depend on who it was who was questioning us, and we had no knowledge of the provenance of the airship. Meanwhile, rolling and yawing, trailing a sooty zigzag of exhaust smoke, it lumbered gracefully away until the curtain of the clouds closed behind it.

     Whenever something unusual had occurred, a fresh rumour would instantly gain currency. It was a phenomenon of those days. This time, following the visits of the airship, the rumour was that the coast was no longer a safe place to head for, and that vessels to lands of sanctuary were no longer to be found. My husband decided we should turn north. Once I asked my husband what our true purpose was; and he said it was to find food and stay alive. When I replied that this seemed insufficient purpose for a life, he laughed harshly and asked why I should suppose there to be any other. He asked what I imagined a Neanderthal would have thought of my comment. I said I did not know what a Neanderthal would have thought. We trudged on in silence.

     But that night, as I slept in a decrepit allotment shed, my husband woke me and said, ‘Come out and look.’ I said it was too cold, but he insisted. I went out, clutching the sparse bedding around me, and was confronted with an astonishing sight. The full moon, in a clear sky, was surrounded by a delicate and perfect ring of light, many times the moon’s own width, almost a third the span of a rainbow; and the ring was of copper, copper-brown and copper-green: the colour of a bracelet patinated in a burial mound.

     Nowadays, when once more I sleep not under dog hides but under eiderdowns, when my bones are frail as chicken bones and my skin saggy as chicken skin, people ask me how I endured those times. I tell them about the search for food, and about the mysterious manna of the airship. I do not tell them about the moon.