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

The job, husband, child, writing, everything
Neatly together: it doesn’t work anymore.
Puts out one cigarette and lights
The next. Another glass of wine.

We’re sitting in Da capo. The first
Telescope showed the jagged edges
Of the moon – an unappealing pattern
Full of peaks and gaps. Abandoned

That’s what he’ll be my friend says
She’ll leave him and jabs out in front of her
With her fork. To be free. I too
Have left a man. The sun

Not the earth at the centre. He wept.
And I couldn’t touch him anymore. Chianti
Saltimbocca a salad. Golden light through
Highset windowpanes. Such young arms

The young girl at the next table has
Around a young man. Does a woman like my friend
Have one arm too many one too few? Are
We then monsters? Are we insatiable?

The priests opposed to Galileo refused
To look through the telescope, justified themselves
With God, the Ptolemaists. Telescopes were
Unknown there. The lover’s presence. Our house

Milk bottles at the door. The earth a slice
Of black bread with heather honey. Can you
Pick up our child? Bring the paper with you.
That and that other matter – that with

The third arm. At the desk. Alone
With the unproven. Obsessed, lost in thought
Galileo stared into the darkness. Jupiter has
Four moons. He threw the warnings to the wind.

When he was old blind silent a student
Asked him if he had really recanted. Yes
He said. They showed me the tongs and
My blood ran cold for fear. I knew

A woman who at forty gave up playing
The piano: pills shock treatment finally into
The water; after five children her daughter took up
Painting. Cancer and already dead at fifty. And I then

Am her daughter. My body is afraid. The sun not
The earth at the centre: thus Galileo at the end.
And, Jupiter has three moons. This as prisoner
In dungeon candlelight and quickly failing

Sight. Bill, please. And it does
Move indeed: it would have been nice
If that sentence had really been his. Outside
In the heavens – the gentle moon. No

Trace of jagged edges.
Entirely smooth entirely
Soft round and perfect.