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

Hermiston is the dead
Victorian villa on the edges
of the wood,
the last house on the lane.
Church bells do not sound this far
and ivy will not climb the brick;
dwale grows amongst the fallen slates.
Leering from above the door,
the first owner’s face in carving
reminds one of the bust of Hawksmoor -
a cruel, demonic Caesar
with a hint of Punch;
a household god.

    In 1969, a record was recorded here:
    Meths Sinclair and the members of his band
    rented Hermiston, spent the summer. Mike stands,
    amps and candles on the floor,
    a Revox in the corner
    capturing the acoustic of the hall
    and cables leading to the well
    used as a reverb; untrimmed wicks,
    a shadow forest on the walls.

    There were rumours also -
    drink and drugs,
    missing village girls
    and the bluesman’s interest in the Devil.

    It’s a classic album, almost unavailable.
    Accident or contract dogs the re-release,
    so it’s sixty-six pounds from a dealer, then,
    in a yellowed sleeve that smells of sweat,
    thirty years of atmosphere collected in the grooves:
    Track one still sends the shivers,
    a drifting mellotron impression,
    with Meths’ own licks and lyrics,
    of the ancient ‘Earl of Salisbury’ pavane;
    the music Morris died to.

    Track two is the Robert Johnson
    ‘Crossroads’ blues,
    by this time a standard
    yet Meths sings it and he means
    a Rubicon:
    Something happened in that house,
    amidst the AC-30s and the cables.
    You can hear it in the reverb tails
    and the crackles in between the tracks.

    The third track, ‘Grabstein’,
    begins with echoed bass guitar
    and backwards sounds -
    an unsure, uncertain laugh
    or scream and then the vocal enters,
    you can smell the smoke and spirit as he sings:
    the lyrics so well crafted
    that their meaning is difficult to grasp.
    A break and then the band begin to chant
    over rolling drums and mellotron;
    the bass returns, a crescendo
    of guitars, the lyrics growled
    towards the fade,
    the black moon turns:
    the atmosphere remains
    long after the last rumble
    as the needle lifts.

From the wood,
chainsaws hack in dentistry
slowed down on a Revox.
Inside Hermiston,
amongst much other junk,
old Edison machines lie unwound
in the attic. Each, in silhouette,
a spent and silent Punch.
Dust the weight of several dead men
has long since settled in the white noise
of the empty house,
its windows blind with iron.

    The second side
    plays outwards from the label;
    just one track, a sixteen minute jam,
    fades out of slowly swirling Hammond
    as Meths’ guitar licks around
    the folk-tune ‘Lonely Waters’,
    drawn out in an Eastern key
    against arpeggios.
    There is so much incidental sound -
    the fret-squeak and the creak of chairs,
    the accidental kicking of an amp,
    its crashing springs - that the record is no longer
    in the listener’s room:
    the listener is in the house with the performers.

A workman clearing scrub turns up
an LP cover, smeared with mud.
From the photograph, a man stares out:
there are no highlights in his eyes.

    Then Meths holds a long note
    up against the amp, feeding back
    into itself, an iron sound. A signal:
    The bass and drums kick in,
    the rhythm and the lead guitars begin
    a steady building of momentum
    until there seem to be
    more players than are present.
    At this point, Meths begins
    his half-heard lyrics - something like
    ‘a ship on lonely waters - blackness all around -
    a full eclipse at sea - depths above and depths below -
    the stars surrounding - caught
    between two hemispheres of preternatural sky -
    moving towards the darkness of a fallen star’.

One imagines forwards to the demolition,
a hollow lane is forming
where the road will go;
There are a few bricks left of Hermiston
and the cavity of cellar and the well.
Then, a JCB is halted, the police are called.
It is a wet day in the distance,
the air half filled up with water;
fluorescent yellow vests are blurred,
forensic overalls crouch down.
Bored officers stand around,
their radios squawk like Punch.