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

Ladies of Lyons, when you read
my querulous and lovesick screed
and hear me sing these wretched songs
of troubles, tears, regrets and wrongs,
don’t censure my naïvety,
mistakes, and youthful idiocy.
Mistakes? But who beneath the skies
can claim exemption from all vice?
Some, discontented with their lot,
want what the folks next door have got;
some, straining after peace on earth,
encourage war for all they’re worth;
some, thinking poverty a vice,
render to Gold their sacrifice;
some swear oaths falsely, and deceive
whoever’s minded to believe;
others with lizard-tongues tell lies,
spreading canards and calumnies.
The ruling planets round my cot
decreed a less unhappy lot:
I don’t go green-eyed if I see
next door get wetter rain than me;
I don’t start brawls among good friends,
or work towards nefarious ends;
to lie, to cheat, to be two-faced,
to vilify, is not my taste;
but if I’ve any fault at all,
it’s Love who is responsible.
He trapped me! I was green and tender,
and busy with a grand agenda
for mind and body, long and testing,
which he soon made uninteresting.
In mastery of needlecraft
I would have challenged and surpassed
that famed, accomplished, foolish spinster
who made Athene weave against her.
I put my martial skills on view:
I couched my lance, the quintain flew!
At the hot lists I did the deed
and spurred and swerved the noble steed
like Bradamante or proud Marphise,
and could have passed for one of these.
What then? Love could not bear to see
my love of war and artistry.
To put new worries in my head,
he smiled, and this is what he said:

“Lady of Lyons! Do you aspire,
with these pursuits, to dodge my fire?
You won’t. I’ve conquered Deities
of hell below, of sea and skies:
d’ye think I can’t make earthlings see
that nothing can escape from me?
All those who glory in their own
prowess, I quickly strike them down.
and he is praised, and I am blamed:
you can’t go on, as you will see,
revering him, resisting me.”
He spoke; hot rage suffused his face;
he drew an arrow from its case
and with full force, not aiming wide,
discharged it at my tender hide,
a rig too frail to guard the heart
from the all-conquering marksman’s dart.
The breach is made, and in Love goes:
he quickly banishes repose
and gives no end of trouble, keeping
myself from drinking, eating, sleeping.
With sun and shade I’m not concerned:
love fires my courage, and I’m burned;
love casts me in a strange disguise,
a self I cannot recognise.
I wasn’t sixteen winters old
when all these troubles first took hold:
and here’s the thirteenth summer season
that Love has had me in his prison.
Now Time dries up the springs that flow,
lays Pyramids and Sphinxes low;
brave Colosseum and treasured town
he strikes inexorably down.
What if Love’s fire is brightly lit?
Time likes to make an end of it.
And yet, in me, that fire augments
with time, and more and more torments.
Paris admired a Cretan maid,
but in two shakes his love decayed;
Jason, who thought Medea was neat,
soon turned her out into the street.
Ladies who love like these should earn
love and affection in their turn.
These men were loved, and yet they quit:
I’m unloved: I should tire of it,
and ask you, Love, for your consent
to terminate my punishment.
Don’t make me weigh what Death can do:
I’d find Death more benign than you.
My darling makes me laugh and cry
like no-one else, and sigh, and sigh:
I’m his, all his: so, Love, if you
are keen for me to see it through,
raise in his heart, blood, bones, a flame
hotter than mine, or just the same.
I’ll find your burden much less bother
when I can share it with another