On an Overgrown Path
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The alternative guidebook leadsto a partially cleared space in the forest,but the next page has been ripped out.
What is it I’m supposed to be looking for here?A flint arrowhead lodgedin the trunk of an ancient oak?The spot where Janác̆ek sat and composed?Is this the furthest point from the coast?
Sometimes I go upstairsthen can’t remember why.And when did these flower-arranger’s handsat the ends of my armsbecome mine?
But I like this place, where a blimp crash-landed,where ley lines cross,where a trapdoor leads to an underground churchhewn from a seam of coal, where the sterling silver shoesfrom a lost team of sacred horsesare still occasionally unearthed. [End Page 183]
Simon Armitage lives in Yorkshire, United Kingdom, and is professor of poetry at the University of Leeds. His most recent collection is The Unaccompanied (Faber & Faber, UK, Knopf, US, 2017), and his medieval translations include Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Faber & Faber, UK, Norton, US, 2007). His dramatic reworkings of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey have been performed at Shakespeare’s Globe, London. In 2015 he was appointed Oxford University professor of poetry.
