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

On iron-hard earth in snow ankle-deep
We shiver this Lord’s Day in the bare woods.
Two years ago the powers of this world,
Sheriff, deputy lieutenant and bishop’s secretary,
Seized on our meeting house in Broadmead.
John Hellier, attorney and churchwarden,
A man crafty and subtle in the law,
And with him Lewis Harris,
A base child, a vile fellow, an informer,
Tore down the pulpit, which they termed our prattling box,
And Harris sprawling in the pulpit seat
Drank a health to King Charles and smoked tobacco.
Then they broke up our seats and burnt them
And tippled by the blaze till they lay snoring
And the boys smashed the windows
And so they nailed up the doors of grace.

We walk the streets of Bristol
Which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt
Where our Lord is crucified every day
Under the informers’ prying eyes
Ignorant whose kiss will betray us
Whether neighbour, friend or brother
And our foes are they of our own household.
(When they broke into Brother Gifford’s house
His child in terror led them to his father.)
The very gables lean together
To spy on us and whisper of our doings.
So as sheep without a shepherd
(For Brother Fownes our pastor
Two years has lain in Gloucester jail,
A bold and patient sufferer for the Lord)
We wander in deserts and in mountains
And in dens and caves of the earth.
One Lord’s Day Brother Whinnel preached to us
In a cave of a rock towards Clifton
While the constables searched for us through the fields.
In woods and lanes we meet,
Sometimes a thousand, and sometimes a handful
Huddled under a tree to shun the sleet
Bedraggled as the starlings on its boughs,
While they hunt us like beasts on foot and horse.
Brother Ford, a mercer in High Street,
Plunged like a hounded stag into the river
And his pursuers watched their quarry drown.
On Lord’s days soldiers keep the gates
But last night we stole softly from the city
To meet in the King’s Wood among the colliers,
A lawless generation, but kinder than the laws.

Earth hard as our persecutors’ hearts,
Wet snow seeping through our boots into our bones
And an icy wind flogging us through the trees
While the children of this world drink by their firesides.
And yet God’s Son shines on us
And we feel the seed quickening under the snow
And know there yet will be a spring
When birds will sing in the green branches
And after that the harvest.