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

Tamed by the galaxy of your body
A second class passenger
Outcast from your love
Self-exiled from a second home

Far above dark shimmering vortex
Yet there is less to stop me
From plunging into the nightmare
Than the plane to nose-dive
How on earth this man-made aluminium bird flies?

Ready for death
But still scared of dying
Bedridden with insomnia
With the torn mattress oozing
Flammable stained cotton
Stacks of books all over the place
And not one would come to bed with me
The one pillow book inside my head
Demands to be recited every night
Viscous but not even circular
Every night with dismay
I start from the beginning but I can’t finish
The last chapter is unwritten

Undetached
Yet with no hope of beholding
The resonance of your body
Fastened
Yet with no expectation from
The flicker of your non-fugitive eyes

A prophet with a dominion of one
And an abysmal cave

“Eqhra be esm-e Rabaka lazi khalagh
Khalaqhol ensana men alaqh”(1)
[“Recite in the name of God that created you
Created Man from polluted water”]

Recite in the name of the One
Whose breasts are the ultimate event
In the path of a universal tongue (2)

Recite in the name of a puerile God
That came to your bosom and held fast
And without the beacon of her magic lantern
Neither the Night of “Ghadr” (3)
Nor the eminence of Night
Could be appreciated

Recite in the name of the shooting star
That stares the ultimate freedom
And cut loose the parachute of
Mindless body
So that your fingers
Are chopped into pens (4)
So that “Nostalgia”
Becomes the bride
Of your poems

Sweat out the fever
Vomit
Tremble

Recite in the name of the One
That wants nothing and demands everything

Recite in the name of Love
That from the candles of its re-birth
Hot wax is dripping
Burning what flesh remains
On a skinny body

And remain silent
In the name of
Sisyphus, Prometheus, and the outsider Camus
Because never, ever again
There will be any consolation
Except the immeasurable longing for death

And in the name of Hafiz
Comply with
The soothing incantation of exile years:
“Khoram an rooz kaz-in manzel-e viraan beravam” (5)
[“Joyful is the day that I depart from this decrepit lodging”]

At last I am going
I am passing away (6) from London
Alas, the lodging is a ruin
But there is no joy
When I vanish from your horizon
From the sky of the city
That I lived in
That shrouded our love

I wish you
Would stop appearing for a moment
Evacuate the vision I have
Perhaps then
I could say farewell
To my city
To a London that rhymes better
With “martyrdom” than “pardon”

“Their England” (7) , my London
Yes my London
At least, in these last moments
She is seeing me off
With the rare beauty of her nocturnal display

Let me say my farewell to London
But the phosphorous anatomy
Has vanished suddenly
Once and for all

We have reached the sea above the sky.