The Manhunt

• Simon Armitage: 'The Manhunt'
• After the first phase

  1. Passionate nights

  2. Intimate days
• Only then would he let me

  1. Trace the frozen river which ran through his face

  2. Explore the blown hinge of his lower jaw

  3. Handle and hold the damaged, porcelain collar-bone

  4. Mind and attend the fractured rudder of shoulder-blade

  5. Finger and thumb the parachute silk of his punctured lung
• Only then could I

  1. Bind the struts and climb the rungs of his broken ribs

  2. Feel the hurt of his grazed heart
• Only then could I

  1. Picture the scan

  2. Trace the scarring back to its source

  3. Come close to the sweating, unexploded mine buried deep in his mind
• Around which every nerve in his body had tightened and closed
• The bullet had finally come to rest beneath his chest