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

They came, they’ve gone back. Miserable death
summoned this one, kept that one; in groups they go
away, come back. On avalanches,
on the spotless sky’s walls reverberate
my loud laughter, scaring them. I watch quietly.

Far, far below the wild spring burns.
There - water; there - the flood of floral hues, the turning of the
                                                                                       season-cycle.
Here seasonal ways are useless. No mad spring. Time is without end.
Still - you people?

Only snow-storms, the crashing of avalanches, light that blinds, and
                                                                                             darkness
that blots out creation, night and day without youth or old age; stupefied
                                                                                                     time.
There’s neither gold nor coal, the possibility of an empire is zero;
still - you people?

Miserable death will summon someone, I summon none.
It’s death who will keep someone, but still I don’t keep anyone.
Then one day they will climb the last peak, plant a flag and return.
Still - me.

The flag of their victorious noises will fly, not here.
More will come at the century’s end, perhaps after man’s bloodsoaked
                                                                                             mayhem.
Markets will open in inaccessible lands, pleasure-gardens in terrifying
                                                                                                forests -
not here, not here.

Markets bazaars shops ports factories military parades,
flowers birds springtimes, birth death love
transformed by time’s oblique passage. Earth’s rebirth at the century’s
                                                                                                     end.
I watch quietly. For here there is no time.
Century after century as endless as snow-spray.
Only me.

Not mine; memories, the ways of seasons, changes of motion.
Memory is time’s skeleton, and I am timeless. Let them come repeatedly
in fearless amazement, joyous triumph, the fertile overflow of brains;
still - me.

Intellect imagination amazement desire - nothing’s mine.
I’m ever-barren, ever-lonely.
They will know the end of mystery, yet mystery is endless.
In so many summers they will circumambulate me in amazement.
I have no summer, winter, spring. Timeless, without youth or old age,
there’s only me.

Here - only the blustering wind, like snow of invisible motion,
only my loud laughter echoing on crashing avalanches;
no horizon, no path - is this for ever? Is this a dream?
Only me.

And you who today, standing on a mound eight and a half thousand high,
are watching me, stuck between two peaks,
looking like a white giant’s thumb (Or is it a shy new bride, her face
                                                                                         lowered?) -
some of you poets, some trembling with greed, with cameras open -
it you knew, if you heard, if you understood,
you would be afraid, you would quietly hide your faces in the green plains.