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

              to be bleak at the continuities of soul
streets of the north star, darkness occluded
working the frequent mysteries of fatherhood
under the animate pale, anticyclonic grey

the darkness in the heart’s erratic motion
               like on the highway those infuriating
cars that race past you and then slow down
muddying the windscreen where the moon was missing

               such a long meander of water
such could have been the emptiness of magic
grass flat and springy, the slow mud is drying
with the first seeds embedded in earth

a grounded swift on the sunlit road
the effort of wings that find no flight
the moments empty as abandoned houseboats
              trailerparks weak with the fear of age

and light is everywhere bright
               as an overhead sun
patterning midday’s foreshortened shadows
while greenfinches call through slowing clocks

tropic   nights    cold    blown    leaves
strewn on lettuces and lawn
              the ammunition of earlier lives
re-entering the pit of memories

fruit swelling on the dead half of a tree
bulk white bags of fertiliser dumped in a field
no shout no breath even to ease
              each silent protest protecting pain

winds tearing up from Europe, Africa
              the way the birds came late in spring
steering into the darkness diminishing
down to polar clusters of constellations

lethargy working against the human clock
all the lost moments with no anchor adrift
              spiralled off into the soul’s sump
container ports for many summers’ sludge

               the wildflower meadows mown
by slow tractors of destruction
fruit hangs in heavy heat, lost children
in photographs faded by sunlight

the pure blue of sky after drench
the white sun and the earth greener
shooting-stars at midnight manifold
               from Perseus across the eastern sky

the span of dykes of trees fallen
               what could be found in ancient instrument
or bodied forth as a leap of salmon
not knowing the crashing of the known world

the river no longer in spate
interrogates the green of territory
              natural boundaries difficult to
map within such distant star-systems

the interposing of raw air winter’s
               reminder Siberian breeze
ungloved fingers that seek the stove
premonition of ice years returning

               in the long limit of off-centre streets
bail hostels, mental health hostels, cheap
lodgings, red light, flashing blue light
leading outward only to dull no-places of

concrete, brick suburbs, motorway intersections
half-derelict industrial sites, shopping
centres out of town haunted by
               a smudge of stars in a sodium sky

the time of man is maybe the last
flicker of light on the swollen river
              animals waiting for the sun’s climb the
cycle of procreation and birth

waterlogged fields their ghosts discarded
what can they say to us or the animal spirits
about those continuities or otherwise in which
              most days we are still dumbstricken

love has crossed the invisible barriers of age
              in and out of windows closed against cold
like shafts of sunlight entering the still surface of a lake
we pursue an early shift with spade and saw

willing the last conformity of swivelled time
corrosion of worth, of all heart’s tenures
in cold drizzle under damp blanket skies
              your face looks out, the eyes searching

toy horizon or a murky pool
rusted pram wheels or a child’s nightmare
              plucking the guitar-strings of the heart
a road leads off, the song remains

my heart flew from me like siskins in pines
              five jackdaws on the grass feeding
I opened a door and scattered seeds
but the heart is shut in and pain throbs there