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

     II
Pride of the stars, the woods, and Acheron,
Diana presides over high and middle and low,
Enlightening, hunting, and apportioning woe
As she drives her horses, hounds, and Furies on.

Such is the lustre, the thrill, the fear beneath
Your clear and swift and homicidal splendour
That Jupiter thinks less of his bolts of thunder,
Apollo less of his bow, and Pluto less of death.

Your beauty, with its glare and snares and horror,
Leaves the heart dazzled, captive, bound like a martyr;
Shine on me, seize me, keep me – ah, but do not repel

With your blazing torch, your meshes, your barricades;
Luna, Diana, Hecate, in heaven, on earth, in hell,
You grace, harass, and scourge our gods, us, and our shades.

     X
Whether the sun with its splendid clarities
Gleams down on us, or whether the night’s gloom
Blots it out, and with its shadowy claim
Blackens again the round vault of the skies;

Whether at last sleep seeps into my eyes
Or I lie awake chasing my curse’s name,
I can no longer escape or stall for time
Or halt the tiresome course of my disease.

It’s my bad luck to be forever chased
By cruel fortune, to be always thrashed –
And each day sees my suffering renewed.

But if these passions, which keep my soul in chains,
Do not assuage the misery of my days,
Then come, death, come and finish me for good.

     XXI
I live and yet I die; my heart, the lord
Of these parts, governs poorly from afar:
Please, if you care that I complete my share
Of days, return my heart – or give me yours.

Thus you’ll restore me to myself, and so
Restore yourself as well: passions that tether
One lover now will then link two together –
Or else your stricture strike a double blow.

You’ll lose us both: first me, who loves too well,
Then you, who loving nothing will loathe yourself.
And if someday someone chooses to reprove

The two of us, me for my glut of esteem
And you for yours of hate, your crime will seem
More grave, since hatred’s even worse than love.