Ten years old,
Down a lane
Behind the school,
Outside primary seven
On the play-yard gravel,
Smitten.
Her name was Jenny
(Though he hardly remembers it)
And she, the sun in his heaven,
Stood in shadow by the canteen door.
He flew toward her, heroic,
Like a spitfire in flight, his wings,
His arms, outstretched.
He stabbed her arm
With a pencil stub,
HB lead embedded
In her skin.
How was he to explain,
Had up before the beak,
That love compelled him,
How he was driven to it?
He claimed some freakish accident
A trick of fate, nothing personal,
An event, in which something
(Though he could not name it)
Resulted in pointless pain.
So it was;
So it ever was:
Love and misdirection,
Fear of being loved.
© BH, 2016
I heard Simon Armitage reading a poem on the radio. He’s a regular, of course, being Oxford Professor of Poetry and possessing a style described as ‘accessible, realistic, critically serious’.
From Armitage’s work online, I selected a poem at random. I’d not read any before and only heard him speak them on radio. I read ‘I Am Very Bothered’ and through it was reminded of my own junior and very personal love’s disgrace.
It seems, then, poets memories are strangely alike.
One of a sequence -
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