October on Earth
and distinctly autumnal,
the goldfish bowl
of the sixth-form common room,
an hour’s lull
in the space-time continuum
between double physics
and English literature,
a radio oozing
uninsistently
with American soft-rock
and easy listening,
a blurred ruckus
of alpha males
working line-out drills
and rolling mauls
with a Hallowe’en pumpkin,
meeker souls
in tight constellations,
some brown-nosing
through Isaac Newton
or Robert Browning,
some Rubik’s-cubing
or grooming and braiding,
some lost in the coma
of late revision.
As Fleetwood Mac’s “Sara”
looped the horizon
(the six-minute-plus
album version)
the school trickster
and first-choice scrum-half
plunged the volume slider
from seven to nought
on the cusp of the line:
“You’re the poet in my heart”.
And the airspace that followed
was instantly baubled
with orbs and globes
from the mouths of angels
and an outed choirboy’s
helium bubbles,
till the heavens ballooned
with unworldly apples.
Simon Armitage is Professor of Poetry at Oxford. His latest book, a translation of Pearl, is published by Faber & Faber.
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This article appears in the 13 Dec 2016 issue of the New Statesman, Christmas and New Year special 2016