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

If we were loved enough and were also able to drown our
                                                                   memory,
If He’d endowed us as well with minds that were patterned
                                                                   after low tide
That could dilute themselves in fatherless bottoms and
                                                                   modest reside
On the deep underbelly of that arc that only man’s destined
                                                                   to deride.
Who would we be now and who wouldn’t we be?
If the sands of time evolved stone and we could bring
                                                   ourselves also to comply
Instead of lapping the pebbles to beach, until exhausted
                                                                   we die
Then each of our lives would be ours alone - not history’s.
What incomparable Eden to just be instinctive
The gull is pushed by a constant wind, pulled back by the
                                                                   swell
Holding bated breath, it guilelessly pierces the white-
                                             capped head of the sea
Each fish is solely unique and different than yesterday’s
                                                                   semblative
Catch, each subtle minnow singing choirs to his tongue
                                             and christening bells
But to our most leathery own - the sad aftertaste of futility.