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

             1
I wriggled like a cat
From the smothering arms
Of insensibility.

The first spring of my heel
Touched light from rock:
There on the heights they still worship.

When my mouth stretched open
In a delicious yawn,
All sorts of coloured shapes

Tumbled out and turned
Into a model army whose manoeuvres
Were never real battles.

But beware: everyone
In turn becomes
His own commander-in-chief.

             2
I lobbed the moon
Like a snowball which smudged the sky,
And the waters followed.

Your blood reminds you of its tides.
Your gut is the Ark of Betrayal,
Shitting the creation.

Standing proud from your body
Is the Vessel of Insolence
With which you will repeople the world.

             3
I began with the soil,
Where rock had been forgetful.
Who could have foreseen it?

Lie with your ear pressed 
To the hot lid of the field
And you will hear the seed uncurling.

Roots creak and branches
Echo them. The eye goes upwards
And outwards.

Above the Table of Love
Is the model of the planets.
This is the holiday of the soul.

             4
I imagined that night followed day
And so invented numbers.
I could believe in symmetry.

In the height of my ambition
I was able to spin into infinity
The accident of star and snowflake.

Nothing that is not created
At this moment will last.
You will never sleep so well.

In your head is a whole clear vision
Of the future: a mirror
In the shape of the world.

             5
I am the dangerous one, who
With a touch of the little finger
Created the absurd heterotrophes.

After me, all plans are possible:
Illusions of independence, magnificence
Of motion, dreams of divorce.

You are sometimes tired now,
Administering rebellion.
You have suddenly realised

That you belong nowhere.
There is no further appointment.
The centre is where you are.

             6
I compounded the blunder and
In a spirit of playfulness I discovered
A form that could discreate itself.

Conceiving divinity, therefore,
You can only mock it.
You have raced ahead of the light.

Nailed by the defeat
Of bone after bone, your head
Is an explosion of myths.

You pretend that the incorporeal
Might be permanent
And you reduce the Many to the One

So that you may cease trying
To look round corners and at last
Understand the unanswerable question.

             7
I am perfect nothingness.
My only instructions
Are to give you a vision of the angels

Which you may take with you
As you run screaming into 
The Sabbath of oblivion.