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

I entered thirst with the shakes
with the conviction of the desirer who doubts
and who goes off in search of a humbler sign
Leaning between the other drinkers
I attended to the ritual
of the rotting of the waters
I drank in order to achieve dignity
in the river of spittle. I left protected
by the virtue and by the faith
that lead to failure : outside
I lost the sense of where I was,
the direction of the wind
Now I drink from the jar
and at every tasting
it is replenished

      *

You must drench the bones
of your dead, ask their pardon
for the poor quality of the wine. And
let’s not have more talk of the dryness
of our glasses : that sound you
hear when night comes
is a river of thirst.

You must ask their permission to
put out their tongues, saying what
is yours to say and then no more,
even though you have a lot to tell:
what you are hiding is a river
of curled laughter.

You must drench off the wine’s goodness
and if no-one appears you must knock down
the door of the tavern, the door that leads
     out to the cemetery.

     *

At the threshold of the sanctity
of a tavern I had the virtue of
not forgetting my failure
Drunk I reached a state of lucidity
keeping my balance on the way
from the table to the latrine
halfway between one glass and the next
far from both crying and laughter
still sober, desolate at the heart
of an island of the arrogant
I had the guts to write some verses
Already far gone from virtue
I saw myself leaving off
almost happy at preserving my
       thirst

      *

How come thirst always
leads you to the latrine
where the signs that other
drunkards left for you
cannot be deciphered,
though convinced that
later or sooner you
would come across them ?

How come thirst
arrives punctually at
the very moment of last
orders and just as you start
anxiously to count both
the time and the taste ?

How come the question returns
if there is no answer to thirst ?

     *
How come this sober boatman
was on the wrong side of the bar
doing nothing but drinking and
slopping it everywhere like those
who go to the Prince so as to mix
with plebeians and losers, witches
of alcohol and bad-mouth adepts ?

That was what I was looking for
but didn’t find at morning’s peak
wounded and carrying a great thirst :
more than a linguistic lack and even
longer than the snake with two heads
hated because of its hypocrisy and
crass diction – and why so – or was it
froth from the rockfalls of laughter
high up on the barman’s rotted teeth
looking for syllables and babbles of
noise on the horizon of the ceiling

[SW and the poet]