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

All crave an end to light, but we people of glass
need simply sprint at stone and shatter bone
                         to silver splinters, or torch our homes,
heat ourselves within to a fierce, orange glow,

then dive into winter lakes, or smash our temples
with ugly chunks of quartz. For people
                         of glass, fragility is the first fact,
and there is no hiding our shared brittle frailty.

But kin to windows, who would wish for death?
In our humanity of glass, hearts are transparent.
                         Thoughts are clear. Like the sun,
we cannot conceive darkness, know no shadow

of our own. Warmed by sunlight, we are content,
for appearance means nothing to crystalline skin.
                         Through the limpid bodies of others,
we see clouds, stars, trees, rocks, rivers, sunsets,

and roses as clearly as we see through ourselves.
Needless, mirrors reflect only on their surroundings,
                         and featured simply for clarity,
our vanity fills only footprints left on beaches

as we walk through lucid days. Our footprints
appear, one after the other, in a shining line
                         wandering the opaque, shifting
stuff of ourselves, our ancestors, our children.

Within the waves, we open an eye in the tides
for glimpses of coral and starfish, the shark’s fin,
                         and the blue muscle of the sea.
Diamonds, our wealthy cousins thrice removed,

are best friend to none and known as the distant,
vulgar relatives they are. Our hands hide
                         nothing of the roses they hold.
And among people of glass, there is no suicide.

Seeing through each other is a simple matter,
no secrets, no hates harbored in darkness,
                         no pettiness seething in our skulls.
Each beams in the sun, minds and hearts open

to the passage of light flying through our minds,
flowing through our hearts like water, touching
                         the earth without casting
our own thick, dark images to the ground.

In cascades of light, people of glass are nothing,
and we know well the way world looks without us.
                         yet when flesh is glass, eyes
are crystal, and we people of glass are blind,

for only in darkness does light become vision.
Empty of all but light, we know only darkness.
                         Blind in a paradise invisible to us,
as we are invisible, we move as wind moves.

Invincible to thorns, we know roses only
as they open, petal by petal. Finding each other
                         is luck, and love, no longer a mystery,
becomes a shadow we cannot cast, leaving us

only sunlight and shining voices in crystal air.