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

Galaxies on Earth
Like confetti
Rosary of intertwined glass beads
The scorpion covered with scales
Upside-down centipede
Waving tiny silver horse-shoes

The galaxy of nocturnal London
Has a platinum spinal cord
More like father’s last chest x-ray
Than the Milky Way

An infantry of glowworms and caterpillars
Embroiled in embers
A cavalry of golden-buzz flying ants
Diamond-eyed owls
On parade
From the lips
Of a kindled Thames
Plundering away the nocturnal dark

“There it is: The Tower Bridge”

The sky has a foot on the plane’s wings
The plane tilts
Mercury is splashed everywhere

I should have
Never let my mind interfere with my heart
Just because you were young
There is no second prize for lovers
The prize is to share
The first prize:

“There was to be a contest
Between the élite artisans and artists of the two empires
Chinese and Roman,
The hall was partitioned by a thick curtain
A one-month deadline was given
To bring to life
Their respective walls
The judgement day came
The partition was removed
Both walls had come to life
With the same unspeakable beauty
Two contesting empires with very different cultures
At their best, producing identical images
How come?
It was soon discovered
The Chinese had painted their wall
The Romans had decided not to paint at all
All along they had smoothed the stone wall
Into a crystal mirror”

The ancient contest is on again
Midway from two entangled constellations of stars
London’s twilight plateau is but a plain mirror
Reflecting the sky

The plane tilts back

In a smoking window seat
I can forget about the tray,
Stupid instructions and the toilet queue
And fasten myself to
The double glazed oval
Of a spectacular odyssey

An ignited metropolis
With its boundless labyrinth
Curls up in my glance

Piloted, driven and carried with such speed
Yet even if I wanted to
I could not move
I am tied to my seat
The fasten belt light is still on
The smoking light has gone off
Smoke is to my liking
Also penetrating the oval

Depression is depressing
But it does not kill
How could the void
Stand up to such pressure?

I am like a bird
Viewing an endless cage
Out of captivity

It is as if Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Is fatally
Over the no man’s land
Or is flying for the first time to Arras
With his post-bags and magic cards
Nocturnal London
Rises like Consuelo

Stretching her body and starting to tango
Dancing until Antoine’s magic
Lands him with a trick:
She is getting naked ahead of the story

Beneath the anatomy of my flight
London
Is a woman in satin
Her pupils betraying the craving
For penetration

A femme fatale
With thighs and thighs and thighs
And arms and arms and arms
And more thighs
She untangles her flickering locks
With the stroke of lightning
Combs her shimmering hair
With desire

Beneath the anatomy of my flight
Thousands of babies are born
Into this citadel of cradles
Thousands of sick people in hospital wards
Say farewell to their fatigued hearts
Thousands of marginalized souls
Carry their corpses
Fixing their look on the tarmac
Like a cane
So as to stand the burden
Thousands of pairs of lovers
And other thousands who would love to pair
Set a flame to each other’s body

Beneath the anatomy of my flight
Millions of pilgrims carrying torches
Drive yet again to their homes
In the phosphorous network of motorways
To take to bed their routine dream
Of flying out once in a year
At the price of staying put for the rest
And their English castles
Instead of turning out as places of relaxation
Look increasingly like boxes of matches
With all the used matchsticks still inside
Chronicling the burned-out years

Are we gaining or losing
Time, height, appetite?

– Whisky on the rocks please!

Space runs away faster than time
Now is there
Here
The moment to arrive
For some time
There has been departure after departure
With no arrival

I try to read my book:
“The curvature of space-time
Bends the direction of light
Deflection tells us about the mass”
I cannot escape. Can I?
Reflecting on the past

Turtledove of memory
Banishes the eagle of observation
From the exilic sky of a forfeited ground

The spider of darkness
Suddenly hunts to extinction
The golden scorpion, the silver centipede and phosphorous                                                                             ants

Flocks of black swans
Are flying into the oval
The silkworm is
The unfastened belt of imagination
Weaving flocks of black cocoons
So that a butterfly emerges
From the throat-weep of saying
Farewell

We have reached the sea above the sky.