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

                                    your body must appear

to fragment      into random

                                                             apprehensions

if not by air at least secular landscape

                                                             you are what drifts

adrift: not silhouette etched
in glass                         erasure: ice on glass

                                    the only possible voice

                                                               animal
         in pain and the internal

tremor predicates the degree of tongue-distention

                                                       you are only shadow
within shadow not even recalled as the subject of light

                                    let alone a present odor
 

successions of identities                         none alive

                           preclude definition though
 the manner in which landscape

                                                is crushed defines

                                                             through the sense
of turning up the eyes

         you will emit no apprehendable consciousness

                                                there can be no succumbing
to categories of intent: therein

                                                lies presence

                                                                       your face
                                                                                   in sovereignty

resembles the line prohibited

                           light beneath a pine needle

                                                              be concerned with
                                                              your breath

                  palpable vapor

which by texture draws

          phosphorescence upon your body

                                        if eyes cannot engage
                                                                   yours
                                        you are dismembered

into effluvium:

                 branches and stones

there can never be history                            in such equation:

                                                                   you did not possess

prior presence;                     none will exude beyond

you are purely

instrument of thoughtless intent:

                                                            not hand
                                                            not glove

                                             but what is enclosed:

                                                            category of darkness

assembling no attributes of night; assembling no attributes

                                                spectral mutation:

move from purple to blue; from green to blood:

                              you have become fog
                              above water       wind
                                          striking straight
                                                                  down