keeping ghosts in their graves

I've actually added two Simon Armitage, 2023 volumes, to my poetry collection recently - I blipped from one the other week - and here is the other, which is a collection of 'assembled lyrics' from Armitage's musical life ...

... and these are the lyrics from the [book] title song, which I particularly like:


Never Good with Horses

You were happiest in the darkroom
conjuring shadows and shades,
running film through your dry fingers,
keeping ghosts in their graves.

And you could handle a steering wheel,
rounding the corners and bends,
watching the movie of life play out
through the windscreen's lens.

But you were never good with horses,
    were you my dear?
Always took a step backwards
    when they came near.
Couldn't bear to look in the dark rock pools
    of their eyes.
Couldn't hold your hand flat and offer
    your sugar cube lies.

Thanks for the dried buttercups
pressed between faded pages,
thanks for the tropical butterflies
pinned in their glass cases.

For the snow-white rabbit's foot
screwed to a key fob, all of my thanks,
and the skull studded with precious stones
and sharks in their glass tanks.

But you were never good with horses,
    were you my dear?
Always took a step backwards
    when they came near.
Couldn't bear to look in the dark rock pools
    of their eyes.
Couldn't hold your hand flat and offer
    your sugar cube lies.

You said a man with his own telescope
isn't especially strange,
and to be a collector of doll's houses
is fine for a guy of your age.

I said look at their pretty ankles
and smooth coats, look at the grey and the black,
but you wanted the painted, wooden kind
you could rock this way and that.

But you were never good with horses,
    were you my dear?
Always took a step backwards
    when they came near.
Couldn't bear to look in the dark rock pools
    of their eyes.
Couldn't hold your hand flat and offer
    your sugar cube lies.

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Simon Armitage (1963 - )

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