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

I

The warm dark room. High windows just imply
Two black, though less black, squares of clouded sky.

That too fades. In her arms the second time:
Pure night through which all constellations climb.

Abstraction at a pitch that’s so intense
Black absolutes blaze clear to every sense.

The high elations shake him through and through.
And words break free, a sigh: ‘I worship you.’

II

The rich ores of that barely conscious cry
Forge instantly, spear-sharp, to accuracy:

Not love, or not yet love, the sacred act
Speaks to that ‘worship’, passionate, exact.

The truly human action which of all
Seems most material, most animal,

This rite of adoration, thigh to thigh,
Creates the star-strewn goddess, the deep sky:

What all those churches shoddily declare
When the theologians smoulder, mystics flare,

The long-limbed, clear-eyed Stranger, worshipped in
Incense of breath or transubstantial skin,

But for its softness marble, you’d suppose,
But for its whiteness, tissue of a rose:

For once those marvels flame mere pharos to
The unconsidered, absolutely true . . .

Through muffled glass, the not extraneous sky
Forms vaguely to his image-dazzled eye.

Sphere after sphere, the apprehensible
Shines light-years through her lips, or past the sill.

Harmonics of pure truth, slight noises spread
Around them, the soft breath, the rustling bed.

III

With gold so faint as almost to be grey
The windows hint of the impending day.

Passion of accuracy, yet no constraint,
As poetry sees it, makes the sage and saint.

What is the sex of meaning? What delight
Labours to loose it from the brooding night?

Here perhaps was accident, the Pythian voice
Drugged where the tripod’s fumes blur chance with choice.

Futures may frame tough trainings, whole techniques
To make life language. Only poetry seeks

Meanwhile — as through jungles rank with myth
Intellect moves in speed and passion with

Pure instinct, like a striking fer-de-lance —
The fluency and rigour of the dance.