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

Two hours since the mangled chords
of metal grinding, one since:
‘Van kaput. Wait fix.’ Missing jazz,

fingers
drum a rhythm on the steering wheel;
change a reed and try it out with blues;
Snift the vodka from the border shop;
thumb Hermann Hesse in paperback or Boobs;
jot a list of tunes in case we make Berlin tonight.

And we talk
of England in a week,
of back to the bore of offices and banks,
of unmissed wives and mileage rates,
joke about this Big Time tour
of drunken squaddie bases (‘better than death’)
and cellar clubs with New Orleans-muralled walls
under clocked and cobbled medieval towns.
And the bass isn’t sure if he loves his kids.
But the banjo knows he caught the dose in Bonn,
worries about his mother’s breakdown.

Beyond the windscreen,
NO STOPPING quavers in a gust
and Potsdam lies flat under heavy skies.
Getting down, I piss the wheel then watch
a team roll strips of earth,
the farmer flick a rein,
horses turn together -
not long since tanks had ploughed...
Nearby, women stoop to pick potatoes.
In another crop, bending poppies gauge the breeze.
A river cooling fogs a row of alders.
Birds flock in a belt of pines.
A hawk hangs still enough to draw.
On a track, stuck for a tow,
a load of cabbages tilts on a broken cart.
A light goes on: silhouetted in a doorway.
someone waves. Eyes shut, I cork the newness -
travel’s language, lock out the roar of trucks
on the road which measures east and west,
the distance to the dumb and one-size usual.

I climb back to the other world. Some sleep,
like a pitful of twisted corpses gassed
by the stink of farted pants and wanks
and jacket-elbows soaked on a thousand bars.
‘Not all that much to see,’ says the tenor sax.
‘Uncivilised, backward commie bastards.
I ask you - ‘orses an’ bleedin’ carts.’

I read to find a mention in the guide book,
blow to part stuck pages, where we are.

Another juggernaut rocks the van.
Under a seat, an empty bottle rolls - clanks, clanks.