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

How still the Caryatids
Hold up their sleeping urns
Above the dreaming lids.
Hark, and the sound returns
Of time's remembered wrack.
Loud the wave breaks, and loud
The dragging wash ebbs back,
Threading a moonlit shroud.

In dread of lightning now
A towering breaker brings
Blackness beneath the Plough
And scatters seabirds' wings
Sleeping upon its crest.
The wild Earth wanders there
Stunned by the moon's unrest
Where seaweeds like gold hair

Cling to a dazzling shell.
Cold are these waters, cold
The tales no lips can spell
Asleep in that white fold;
Yet the grave arms how strong,
Supporting, while seas broke,
The balanced urns of song
Under the lightning-stroke.

Aggressive candour plays
Already in your eyes
Teaching you daring ways,
Lending your bold replies
An elemental charm
Pure as the light of dawn.
And how could I disarm
A truth so finely drawn

From the dark sheath of sleep?
You are not six years old;
Yet the first wash will keep,
Whatever life re-mould
With brush or palette-knife
Afterwards on the page.
And I, who watch your life
Against the uncertain age

Momentously at rest,
Already see divined
The joy by which we are blest
Moving in eyes declined.
How should I pray? My prayer
Found in closed eyelids stands
While seawaves pierce night's air
And pound the unyielding sands.

There all the reckoned grains
Obey the rock-like Word
Whose lightning love remains,
Waiting to be restored.
And still how patiently
They watch above your bed,
Nor touch the form I see.
Like footprints on the sea,
How near is love to dread!