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

What do I care about the Prince of Emghion or not-Emghion
What do I care about sultans, emperors or universal fame
I am blind
The little goodness I can feel
is to pluck with my fingers among some fragrant leaves
while I wait for her
who will come and hand me some bread to eat

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The sea is the greatest sculptor
The sea is the greatest jeweller
The sea and death
There is no stone so jagged
the sea won’t rub it smooth
or grind it to sand
or finer
The sea gives birth to corals and shimmering creatures
evil and good
It gives birth to chiaroscuro and surface glitter
and deep dark
Death smoothes out evil and good
There is no fate so jagged it is not worn smooth by death
The sea that breathes, that sighs outside my window
Where I lie with death in my heart
waiting for the Pleiades to set

1965

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The angel is here
I have felt how its wings
bring air to my stifled room
I am blind
She looks at me with big open eyes
and wants to die
How shall I come out of this divorce
between justice and justice

*

Yes, your face is my pleasure-garden
not my eyes’
but my hands’
With my hands I see your eyes
how they tremble
how the eyelids quiver
With my hands I see your hands
now mild, now recalcitrant
your arms, under your arms
your breast, your body
My hands see if you recoil
in fear, in disgust
if you recoil in mercy
in compassion
or recoil in love
All this my hands see
which have become my eyes

10.11.65

*

When did you see a cuttlefish
willingly crawl ashore
No, a storm threw him there
with a thousand arms the storm threw him there
He himself, with only eight arms

But for each arm a hundred and one suckers,
then two eyes, papillae: a hundred and ninety
or more. And then the sea flowered
for him - a sex organ too
That makes a thousand and one arms against the sea’s thousand

Love and violence, pleasure and prey, and pleasure again
Thrown on the sand he vehemently inhales
his life, his death while the victory arm withers
Passing humans call him “influenced”
“Too many suckers,” they say, “too many impressions”
They say: “He can’t stand the fresh air”
Perhaps because they can’t stand the salt water?
They forget the eyes and the thousand-and-first arm
the extra limb

1966

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