Simon Armitage - The Manhunt - EDUQAS WJEC GCSE lyrics

The Manhunt – Simon Armitage After the first phase, after pa**ionate nights and intimate days, only then would he let me trace the frozen river which ran through his face, only then would he let me explore the blown hinge of his lower jaw, and handle and hold the damaged, porcelain collar-bone, and mind and attend the fractured rudder of shoulder-blade, and finger and thumb the parachute silk of his punctured lung. Only then could I bind the struts and climb the rungs of his broken ribs, and feel the hurt of his grazed heart. Skirting along, only then could I picture the scan, the foetus of metal beneath his chest where the bullet had finally come to rest. Then I widened the search, traced the scarring back to its source to a sweating, unexploded mine buried deep in his mind, around which every nerve in his body had tightened and closed. Then, and only then, did I come close.