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

Caliban in his sleep could hear
those island voices in a dream
as all who listened are atuned
to shapes invisible but near
      ‘A House of Music’ – K.R.

What criticism this that judges vision
as if the world was image only, and all
the large dissolved by detail? Like cells
born blind they form an eye but cannot see
the ocean’s vastness, that leaf and tree each have
their own consistency. We name a world
of many levels, and none by eye alone
perceived; each flint, hand dug, stone shaped, a tool
of thought. Their use and making is our common
gift, by which and her own words we share
her vision, see her stand. She holds the earth
in the palm of her hand, and marks the span of all
the lives that stood before, and in each figure’s
hand an image of the world’s slow turning.

Turn then this thought upon itself: the world
is richer for neglect of details; all
gain the layers of hill and tree; lift up
your eyes, as passion wills, to see beyond
this world another form of harmony,
whose voice and words will not be bound or stilled.
For all the hate we loose upon ourselves
the stars still burn unblemished; and there are some
whose voice regrets the blindness that pollutes
this earth, still see the world as it was meant,
and in the now remember this, that seer’s
words have power beyond this moment’s death,
reborn to thought in each ancestral mind
their image stands forever outside time.

What if her vision did not see the flotsam
that then marred the beach, the Coke cans and
cigarette butts; what crime was this to warrant
charges? That she saw in depth and balance,
made a selection from the senses, saw past
and present in one moment as does a child?
This was no crime, unless imagination
be a crime, a Hebridean nightmare dreamt
once on Jura. Yet science, that archetype
of observation, transcends our senses; nor
is by instrument confined. And thus does
poetry extend the compass of our lives,
thought become absolute, thought made art,
whose voice reveals us small, and weak, and great.