Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

Light disappears
Darkness stays

The candle light
Reflected a butterfly
On your face

We had a sweet time together
You flowered
In my arms

The privilege of witnessing
That inner-beauty
Coming to surface from the deep
Like crimson percolating from red

Kept-hidden beauty
Unlocked only by love-making
So graceful, so sensual
Such bounty!

You were a shred of Shiraz
A shrine
Of arriving at the final destination
A shroud to keep away the envious world

There is no light
The cross-channel tunnel
above the sea

I read again:
– “Do you see her in your dreams?’ the Emperor asks                                                                                              Farhad
– “Yes sire, that is if I ever go to sleep”

– “What is this business of Love?”
– “Sire! When life is joyfully given
     In return for an agony
      One cannot possibly be cured of,
            Then the business of love
            Is concluded”

– “And so is ours”

And like Farhad, I am left alive
To dig a tunnel into the mountain
With bare hands
So that fresh water from “Bisotoon”
Is turned into a spring
So that Shirin can bathe
In her hunting palace
A never ending task

Half of the time
Benevolent emperors are doubly cruel

You were Shirin of Armenia
Guest queen at Persepolis
With stone-cutter Farhad
Contesting your love
Against Khosrow, the Emperor of Persia
And you were very particular
About how you took your baths

Everything is washable except a mistake
Which is swapped for another mistake

You were my never departing light
And darkness yet to come

The turquoise-sky era
Of our sweet togetherness
Came to an end
And we took the consequences
You left
I suffered

You left
Or did I push you out?

Then you made the empty sky
Your Mecca, your benefactor
You travelled back
Two thousand years
Without getting any younger
You rushed all day
Going to all the different churches in town
And assumed the position
Of the Virgin
Waiting for the Holy Ghost
To christen you

You broke away last time we almost made love
Asked me to get dressed and come along unwashed

As if we were late for your church wedding
And that was your hen-afternoon
We walked through that little beautiful park
To reach your denominated church in Highgate
But you were “a material girl” all along
As Madonna says
And impatient
Always taking the first bus
Even when it went
In the wrong direction

In that burglarized room
No candle was ever lit again
The butterflies who never saw light
Nibbled at my serenity
Spreading infestation
Like a moth-eaten carpet
Death even abandoned me
Following hope
Though one can never stop hoping

I am in the air
Going from one exile to another
Re-locating
From one little room with no curtains
Unlit and blind
To another cell
In this great continent of Europe

I wish I could say goodbye
To myself
Like an elephant
Beginning its retreat to die
And if it had any ivory
It would have left it for you
For you who stood your ground

London’s most beautiful profile
Is seen from above
From the sky of dusk
From the tilting oval
Of a plane
On a night flight

You are most beautiful
From beneath
From the dust
From the dust on the ground

You are most beautiful
From below
From an underground shoot
From one being crushed
Into the sea
Into the bottom
Into the bottom of the sea
From down below
From
The lower body
From earth
From
Under the Earth’s crust
Where the firework is