England Germany

By Glyn Maxwell b. 1962 Glyn Maxwell

The boys were risen right out of their seats

By the wind the whistle cued, they pushed along

In the damp and heavy-coated crowd, away

From all of it, away from this one song

The man beside them knew. Rough cigarettes

He’d prodded at them while he had his say

About the action. Now where was he gone,

They wondered. Not so far: he’d only paused

A sec to cup a hand to his white face

As the flame he got kept blowing out. This caused

The men behind to eff and blind this one

Obstruction tottering in the one place

They had to be. In good part the boys too

Had something left to share with him: some crack

About his not-in-fact-that-lucky stone.

But when they turned again he still hung back,

Striking and striking as men muscled through

Obscuring him, till he became unknown.

Source: The Breakage: Poems (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1999)

Biography

Born in England to Welsh parents, Glyn Maxwell was educated at Oxford University and Boston University, where he studied both poetry and theater with Derek Walcott. This simultaneous training in two disciplines has enabled him to create innovative work across genres. Maxwell has written numerous verse plays as well as long narrative poems. The Sugar Mile (2005), a verse narrative set in a Manhattan bar a few days before . . .

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