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

     *

these shy glances
prod me like buds
firm and colourless
their name is loyalty
I am helpless
what if the frost strikes

     *

the shame of piercing blindness
directed at oneself
is the first impression of shamelessness
everything is visible down to the

     *

my life might have been different
but then I’d have been an entirely different person
as if nothing had happened
it would have looked out of the mirror
like before not recognising me

      *
the water continues on past the horizon
the earth turns beneath it
and then there’s this awful pressure
therefore love what you see

      *

don’t look for needles in a haystack
you may impale yourself on blades

      *

opera is a strange notion
the singers sing about private matters
and music flows like life in general
finally all disperse
the composer carries off the finale
and each returns to his or her individual
life without music

      *
music
       venturing outside
simulates night
and nocturnal sounds like the colours of day
anticipating the storm suddenly blossom

but when the cymbals and thunder ring out
the sound of rain effaces everything

      *

in time’s crooked hallway
the insect’s silent cry
for help and of pain
draws gratefully on a century of torment

      *

whoever is able to consume himself leaving nothing over
will live a fulfilled life
so as to disappear without a trace
nobody can find anything

      *

the longer one lives
the richer the past
which makes it even harder
to pass through the needle’s eye
of one’s own death

      *

a faded flower
like a body weary of its soul
dies of memories

      *

death is probable and life inevitable
morning catching day by its tail
night dies of light deprivation

      *

before moving on
let’s sit down
strictly speaking
                      that’s what life is
before dying
we sit down for a moment