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

River, deep as death, deeper, Avernus,
Red water of ox-hide, ox-blood, clouded,
Drawn across these caverns like a taut sheet,
What is down there, under the cliff edge,
Deeper than hell? Village
Lost to all time, under the sick arch-way,
The lost steps lead there, the life
Stirs like a movement of moss.

If I were to awake in that underworld, whom should I see?
Not Nestor, not Paris,
Not any heroic shadow, long putrescent,
Blown into dust: no woman
Caught my wandering eye last summer
Or any summer gone. The friends of shadows,
The commonplace merchants of ambition,
These are the ones, bragging in the market-place
So vain is all philosophy
My teeth were set on edge by such merchants
Half a caravan back: and when they came
To the high street where the palms set the form
It was eating and drinking who must,
Who laughed loudest, who spat,
While I stood by discreetly.
Worn hours! bitter heart! petty mind below all
No kiss of sun can cure, autumn eyes
Seeking rather between shadows the hurt.

There are gigantic shadows upon the cliff face
I have seen them scowl and lour over the village.
All villages have them: they are the governors
Living among themselves without passions
Touching our parts. I had lived among them as evil
No man knew better their vain twists,
Admired what he hated most
Or so fell to dreaming of impossibles
Which are only eaten ambition,
Knives in the heart, or pure reason.

A handful of almonds, a few grapes
All that the fine fingers could pick
Out of the residue of the world
Was not enough for this termagant.
The fine surface of bodies touched
By the sun and rendered potable
Was not enough for the eye-palimpsest;
The half-eaten moaner must moan.
What cages for tigers, whips for scorpions or other
Replicas of effete damnation
Had been prepared, must find a place
Within the cataclysm of each mind.
Mine was none of the stablest, I felt,
Looking over the impeccable scene,
The cicadas chipping the hill-side.