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

For Patricia Owens and Lorenzo Muti

One poppy
                             Lonely field
Two poppies
                             Murmured conversation
Field of poppies
                              Red musics

*

When notes break from
                                       the red
poppies’ purple throats

I remember life’s petals

strewn on the ground

*

Collect corn poppies
in small muslin bags
suspended round the neck

Pack tightly in straw
Send off the same day
before they lose their stained-glass
red staccato

Use them for syrup
Use their seeds
Eat their ferny glaucous foliage
Hear their red music

*

If you had seen the poppies there
in the half-shade summer’s Tuileries

                            you’d say

What bad luck to bloom
and fall
                                so quickly
                                                 when
                                night’s music
                                can swing so sweetly
above the hard clay

*

But, oh, what red music
                                            under the orange
sun

                              and what
black throats to sing

*

Shy goose-necked unopened buds
pressed and folded within

on May’s bright morning
shaking out crumpled
solemn sounding
somber red musics

*

Poppies in a field
                                     Red music
cracking the crickets’
                                     ears

*
A little night
                                  music?
You’d think the red

                             poppy
had written it …

No matter what time

                             of day
                                        a little night

sizzles in its red musics
                                    its black throat tremolo