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

1-9 January 1937

Cling to me, you said. I did just that -
like a hawk, like a ringed dove,
feeding equally from the chain of things.

Why, then am I trailing you,
now through a pine-wood, now through words,
going nowhere fast?

There’s a gypsy encampment on the steppes,
newly moved in - sharp fires gone
by morning; the stamped ash
surrenders no clue or forwarding address.

I am in Voronezh, in the pine-woods,
trailing you.
There you were, like memory,
- a shackle.

6-10 January 1937

You’ve seen how a bullfinch’s plumage
grows tighter and tougher
given a backwash of snow?

     That’s winter for you.

And the leaves grab your attention
with circus-ring magic
- those galloping, garish colours?

     It certainly gives them the edge.

Well, it’s January and I’m ready for a change.

     The snow is staring you out.

I’ll chance my arm with the dead.

     My colour, blood.

16 January 1937

Low pressure over Voronezh, the barometer’s held
breath.
I’m foot-slogging snow-drifts
at the edge of the world. It’s a virtual white-out.
Where the paths end up is nobody’s business.

A river might be pleasant,
free-flowing, heading somewhere.
I’d follow it, try my hand with flotsam,
go all the way…

But that’s by the by.

(Me, head-down in the water, listening to forests grow.)

21-22 January 1937

As with autumn, so with spring,
both tedious leave-taking
- ice chinking in the gutter,
the river’s penniless swag.
Once, we were moved like that,
our minds thawing with bottle after bottle.
I would sing like Dante, exhausted
by the night before, the night to come.
Say I’m the ghost of what I am.
I watched a log-pile turn into a village
with the morning’s first ember.
Nobody’s here to tell me it’s illusion.