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

HEARING VOICES AGAIN

Obviously evil
motherfuckers
rule the world.
God told me
some reasons why:
we never listen;
Word into flesh into writing
evaporated life giving water
into thin air;
there is more to his name
than the rose can answer for.

It is a dangerous deceptive power
that comes from language,
the way we use it.

One as yet unrealised
told me another reason why:
she has no house
of translation
in which to dwell.

As for me personally
I prefer to be alone.
Anyway there it is.
I was commanded.
Building began in
Jerusalem.
Foundation of my faith.
City of changes.

FEELING NOTHING BUT PAIN

At Golgotha,
orthodox today,
dense and unlovely,
Jesus told me:
“I am waiting for you
in Galilee.”
As though I was an apostle,
and time irrelevant.

That rose had thorns.

***

Seeking his presence,
orange trees, olive groves,
a perfumed wind,

I found him not
until,
on the road
to the river Jordan,
he asked me
a question:
“Are you able to be baptised
with the same baptism
with which I was baptised?”

I said yes,
devotion against doubt
securing courage
against ignorance.

No-one was preaching
repentance
beside the river that day.
Herons had occupied
the marshes.
Vultures circled
on a military flight path,
on an evil wheel.

I waited alone;
ate bread alone;
returned alone
along the shores
of the Sea of Galilee;
saw at their nets
fishermen
preparing for the night.

I wanted to go out over the water.
To be where he had walked.
To receive some confirmation or sign.
I ran to the fishermen to take me out
in their boat onto the Sea of Galilee but
I didn’t even see him coming until
it was too late.
The terrible swan.

***

I said no often enough but it made no
difference in the end. The fishermen
raped me anyway. One and then the
other and then one and then the other.

When they were done one called me
dirty. The other pissed in the water.
And all around me on the deck the
majestic fish lay dying, spiked and
slowly dying on the red deck slowly.

Strange love this. Some compassion
twisted and strange. To receive a
baptism by fire into the real world.

I stepped out of the boat as dawn laid bare
the land with light. The hills were revealed
as olive green and structured as the trees
they sustained. I found my footing and ran.

ERECTION

Spat out
into the wilderness
Satan piped up
right away:
your trust has been misplaced
that all has been provided,
including security;
you are pregnant;
you have AIDS.

God speaks like the ocean:
take more power;
Jerusalem is your spiritual home.

Over my head,
blotting out stars,
segments of days,
vast anonymous wings
open and close.

MOTHERING ALL

God laps at my wounds,
I piece together silence,
wind crackles.
Years pass.
One day
my sins are all forgiven.

I start again.

***

Hearth of hope,
a fireplace blazing,
I go from death to life
like a lamb to the slaughter
quickly led -
a house of sorrow
is not a home
fit for a queen.
Further construction is
another type of
translation.
I give birth
to a baby daughter.

I could not have known
that she should be
so dear,

beautiful, tiny,
a rosebud soul.
Kiss her feet
at the close of day
banish her tears
forever away
Mummy is
instant security
Tinkerbell

When Jesus was baptised
he found out who he was.
All I got was lust.
Something

slow burning as I approach closer purifies.

One as yet unrealised
speaks again:
You come before me
and yet
I rise to conquer.
Get used to the wind.
And if I come
dancing
out of storm clouds
you will recognise me
by my numbers,
my shirt of gold.

TEMPLE

Interface is faulty.
God cannot get through,
a crush of idols,
his meaning so much debated.
Nothing remains except
the impossible truth:
it is time
for God
to return to us
reborn,
once more translated
into human tongue.
Some such temple
as prophets have dreamed of
aspires to be
born in us
that she who remains unrealised
night dwell
without fear of us
in the midst of us
this time.
Babel in reverse,
a divine rose garden.

This house on its hinges is an
exponential harvest.

This journey towards the kingdom would
not have been possible without faith.

The water I walk upon.

The grain of mustard is the smallest of all the seeds.

REALITY

Why then is grief destroying me?
Why are there no more words?
I have built the house of translation is why.
Out of the terrible pain.
Out of the agony of rejection.
Termination by denial.
I have become one with God.
I have become the living Word of God.