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

CLEON :
Atlantis .. ? A lost Continent .. ? No ... If the sacred bulls
Ever were dragged in with chains and struck to their knees
Propitiously by any column to please Poseidon,—
There in Crete was sacrifice ... Only there ...
Sea-deep under the inundation of the years ...
Where Cnossos lies, Cydonia and wide-staired Phaestos,
Breathing flowers out of the dried blood on buried altars ...
Only there look for Atlantis and the lost conquerors ...
Their palaces thrown down utterly ... And the thyme
Dusty and stiff among the splintered marble ... Blowing banks
Of tamarisk marking the sunken courtyards ... The laid bare
Fall of a stairway—always that !—wider than
Five chariots ... Pawing of horses, a tossing of heads
And jangle of harness-trappings ... Yes ... Though only the goats there
Browse in silence ...
LEONIDAS :
                                          Then, down by the junipers,
Coming across him ... The brown boy ... Pitching a trinket,
Was it ... ? Or something better ... ? Yes, and the dull gold
Scratched into good life under your thumb-nail ... !
                                                                                       I know ...
Whether of arts or whether of wealth, a world lies buried
There with its ghosts in the dead cities, whose ruins hold
All that man has learnt and loved and called beautiful,—
Whether of arts or whether of wealth ... An earlier craft
That still works unconsciously in the shaping hand ...
A lost culture ... A lost creativeness, ... A lost vision
That meant much to our world once, and still could win us
What we desire of the beautiful and would understand ...
Yes, the Dorians wrought sad havoc ... And ours is the loss ...
That, though nothing matters to me but life as I know it ...
There in the Islands ... Back in our stinking whore of a sea-town ...
Or pressing to seawards under a full sail ...Once more feeling
The spell working ... As when we stood in the prow together
That morning and watched the sea wear Crete again like a crown ...
CLEON :
Rearing up there out of the wine-dark sea ... Thrown
Like an army against the South Wind ... Her great hills
Dark with woods ... Clouds drawing slowly across her shoulders
Changeable pattern of deep shadow ... A bright rainbow
Falling upon her in a river of colour ... The villages
Clustered above the quiet shore like a scatter of boulders ...
Up there on the open hillside above Cydonia ...
Wind running riot over the grass and the tall trees—
Black cypresses and the poplars—gracefully bending
Before the onslaught of the ravisher ... And the oleanders
Fighting it like sturdy boys ... Then the sun racing
Back into a clear sky and the love-sport ending ...
LEONIDAS :
I remember my first sight of her ... In from the Cyclades ...
Finding the sea a sweet calm, and the sail scarcely
Pulling us in to the invisible shore ... Then there,
Looming above us out of the warm haze, Mount Ida ...
Wading and lost in it up to her knees ... Bursting
Suddenly into the full sunlight, her breasts bare
And a kirtle of woods about her thighs ... Finally
Coming to sight of brown earth, where the bare foothills
Folded about their valley ... A sprinkle of neat
White farms grazing the slopes like sheep, and the little town
Waiting beside its welcome harbour ... The whole scene
Quivering like a fawn's flank in the morning heat ...
Yes, that was my first sight of her ... And the sea no longer
Wine-dark, but blue as a turquoise ... Gently rocking
The sponge-divers in their shallops about our bows ...
And there ashore, unmindful of any part in the whole;
Men bent upon peaceful projects ... Much labouring
Up in the vineyards ... Much herding ... A driving of ploughs
Over the waiting fields ... Threshing and winnowing ...
Down in the harbour, sea-thoughts of putting out
Shortly upon a similar venture to our own ...
Well after the summer solstice, when the season
Of drowsy heat had come to an end ... The Pleiades
Up in the swart sky by night, and the sea prone ...
Yes ... And the sea prone ...
Well, that is the sum of it, then ...  Memories ...
An old man on an empty shore ... And the blithe South
Bringing the fever that knows all over ... In which hope dies ...
Back here at the end of it all, a new fretfulness ...
Watching the swerving of outbound wildfowl ... Envious ...
Feeling the cool draw like a feather across the eyes ...
Licking the dry patch of a lip ... And sighing
To know the wind shift once more out of Libya ...
Minding that other vastness, the muscular sea ...
Feeling the tingling of the inblown spume
Cool on the forehead in an old eagerness ...
Visioning other cities ... Over the waves there ... Free ...
White cities ... And lost cities ...
                                                                              Oh but mostly
Knowing the voyage over, and all it has meant to me ...

From: THE LAST HELLENE.