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

Return to the earth is the way to think of this -
if a body loses its vitality and hits the ground
and if it remains thus grounded for any length of time
then the entirely natural process of deconstruction will kick in.

Earth has a ready army of specialists -
the insects are usually the first
especially if the body in question presents an open wound
in land environments, carrion birds and rodents will not be far behind
while in some provinces, much larger predators may speed the process
as will ambient heat.

Beyond a certain point we believe that the body is neither sensate nor sensible
so we may not experience these tidy and purposeful depredations -
the tap touch of insects
the delicate probe of mandibles
or, in the case of a drowning, the tentative enquiries of little fish
the resolve of battening eels.

Whatever the case, nothing to fear is the way to think of this -
in fact, we should not expect pain, but a sense of wonderment
as the body passes itself into the fabric of these thousand lives
of which, before, it had probably lived in ignorance.

Who becomes ant becomes one of the world’s most admired minutiae;
who becomes fish will be as astonished as one who travels to the moon;
as worm, the dark womb of the earth is open to him again;
as bird, he will soar into the over-arching sky
which is the only true meaning of heaven, we believe.

It does them no favours, the pomp and circumstance we accord the generals -
the orations, the wailing women, the catafalques.
Let the dead find their own way to immortality -
return to the earth is the way to look at this.