easing up for the lollipop lady,

not inhabiting the divine sepulchre,

not crowing over Arctic adventure,

not standing gob-smacked beneath ancient sculpture,

not kneeling empty-handed, open-mouthed

at the altar, but in the barber’s chair

or tattoo parlour, in a sleepy trance,

catching in the mirror the startled face

of some scissor-hand, some needle-finger.

ROBINSON’S RESIGNATION

Because I am done with this thing called work,

the paper-clips and staples of it all.

The customers and their huge excuses,

their incredulous lies and their beautiful

foul-mouthed daughters. I am swimming with it,

right up to here with it. And I am bored,

bored like the man who married a mermaid.

And I am through with the business of work.

In meetings, with the minutes, I have dreamed

and doodled, drifted away then undressed

and dressed almost every single woman,

every button, every zip and buckle.

For eighteen months in this diving-helmet

I have lived with the stench of my own breath.

So I am finished with the whole affair.

As for this friendship thing, I couldn’t give

a weeping fig for those so-called brothers

who are all voltage, no current. I have

emptied my locker. I should like to leave

and to fold things now like a pair of gloves

or two clean socks, one into the other.

This is my final word. Nothing will follow.

INCREDIBLE

After the first phase, after the great fall

between floorboards into the room below,

the soft landing, then standing one inch tall

within the high temple of table legs

or one inch long inside a matchbox bed …

And after the well-documented wars:

the tom-cat in its desert camouflage,

the spider in its chariot of limbs,

the sparrow in its single-seater plane …

After that, a new dominion of scale.

The earthrise of a final, human smile.

The pure inconsequence of nakedness,

the obsolescence of flesh and bone.

Every atom ballooned. Those molecules

that rose as billiard balls went by as moons.

Neutrinos dawned and bloomed, each needle’s eye

became the next cathedral door, flung wide.

So yardsticks, like pit-props, buckled and failed.

Lifetimes went past. With the critical mass

of hardly more than the thought of a thought

I kept on, headlong, to vanishing point.

I looked for an end, for some dimension

to hold hard and resist. But I still exist.

A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Simon Armitage is Professor of Poetry at the University of Sheffield, United Kingdom, and has written extensively for radio and television. His previous titles include Kid, Book of Matches, The Dead Sea Poems, CloudCuckooLand, Killing Time, The Universal Home Doctor, Homer’s Odyssey, Tyrannosaurus Rex Versus the Corduroy Kid, and Seeing Stars. His many honors include a Forward Poetry Prize, and the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. His acclaimed translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was published in 2007, and in 2010 he received the CBE for services to poetry.

ALSO BY SIMON ARMITAGE

POETRY

Zoom!

Xanadu

Kid

Book of Matches

The Dead Sea Poems