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

The Christian God is standing on
A branch-line platform. No train comes.
Once, in a distance, movement shone
And thundered. He remembers sums
Of things that shine and thunder but
His all-forgetfulness conceals
That viaduct. Fog’s vaguely cut
It. Weatherbeaten God? He feels
The burden of omniscience more.
(He still, despite stern lectures, clings
To absolutes.) Man makes a score
Of truths while one speck of lark sings
Slightly heavenward. It’s hollowed
Him like an All Souls’ lantern. When
He, through an unhinged door, followed
A darkling cloud of clergymen
And choristers, each one amazed
Him with superior knowledge — which
He tries to comprehend — so dazed
He staggered into sawdust, rich
Sandlike grains from some sawn-up fence,
And almost let them recognize
Him but planks hindered their keen sense
Of vision. Everywhere else eyes
Probed: into offices that were
Shut; into shabby waiting rooms;
A booking hail where thick dust fur
Hid UP and DOWN signs. Huge white blooms,
Though, in a garden couldn’t find
One witness. Nature never was
His stillest point; and if the mind
Of this age seems restless because
It worships motion rather than
The company of heaven — well,
He sympathizes. Only, can
A train come soon? He likes its smell,
Its noise. He wonders at the track:
Such certainty. He will enquire
Where signals.... Outing has sunk back
In a hired scarlet coach, the choir
Is shrieking over Tarmac Hill,
Dampdale’s pampered with songs of praise.
He half hopes some free will might spill
Cold water on a heartless craze
That crept in with these railways — would
His sceptics’ thunderbolts had sped
Down! Once, perhaps, and that for good —
That craze for knowing God is dead,
Or never was, when waiting here
He is now. One or Trinity
He wants a train. He’s grown to fear
This dead curve to infinity.