Chapter 4: four
The Shout
We went out
into the schoolyard together, and the boy
whose name and face
I don't remember. We were testing the range of the human voice:
he had to shout for all he was worth,
I had to raise an arm
from across the divide to signal back
that the sound had carried.
He called from over the park--I lifted an arm.
Out of bounds,
he yelled from the end of the road,
from the foot of the hill,
from beyond the look-out post of Fretwell's farm--
I lifted an arm.
He left town, went on to be twenty years dead
with a gunshot hole
in the roof of his mouth, in Western Australia.
Boy with the face and the name I don't remember,
you can stop shouting now, I can still hear you.
by Simon Armitage
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone