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

For myself, I would prefer to be alone
savoring the privacy of my decay.
I cannot see a fraternity of death
beneath or above ground. Those without souls
should stay in solitude, to meditate
soullessly. There is a shame in death
when it is old and shared.
                                       They've turned to leather.
Terminal wounds scream knives.
Their mouths are open too, in agony
or in surprise, but calm now, even screaming.
Note that their genitals are gone. The organs
that formed them living abdicate for death.
You speak of flown souls; note these shriveled loins
that make a better line of demarcation.
Mother and child, soldier and priest, lover and lover,
have lost their stories in the lime museum.
Only, perhaps. a crumpled piece of parchment,
Ana Ramirez, dead in her first childbirth
tacked without ceremony on a belly.
And truly, I could not care less for stories
than for a name for each of the grey skulls
piled in the anteroom. Death has a lesson
for us, but not in tragedies and titles;
and these are here because they are
unpaid-for. Nameless now
they bear the better title of The Dead.
My presence cannot disconcert these objects.
(For such they are, and objects of instruction.
They, like the knife of Plato, must be used
to fill a function well.) The end of man
is such. I feel some warped affection for them.
Indeed, I would not join their congregation;
these do not value privacy enough.
Sing in their chorus? No; I would prefer
to be alone
                  but why the mould and clay?
Dust soon enough, I'll do, alive or dead
as I do best, and speak as I still can.
Men make a better audience than worms.
(A mind before the white grub's appetite.)