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

1        Glassed from the darkening blue, I watch
          the last bluetits swinging, goldfish breaking
          the pond’s surface, gaping, gaping,
          the trees standing closer and more solid

and men being shot on the streets of Myrzabad
and Hollywood, a woman winning a freezer,
mice that mate in the Atacama desert,
a child acting out its horror with dolls.

All’s one. My face moons in the darkened glass,
longing to come in.

2        Some dawns the fox comes quick, dandy,
          across the lawn, checks the dog’s markers,
          inches open the dustbin lids, so deft, assured.
          With binoculars I see
          its broken teeth and raw drifting mange.

3        The world presses closer through the glass -
          my neighbour alone with her children -
          children starve in Africa, rockstars
          play music for them - his final joy
          was amytal and a length of rope -
          closer.

4        A virus more deranging than rabies,
          more fatal than Aids -
          loss -

the fiction of a time when people
lived together, loved as best they could
and died among their family.

5        Along the dry conduit, from downtown L.A.,
          inexorably comes the Terminator.
          No flies on him.
          “Crawl, punk,” he snarls as if
          to crawl, run, fight or pray
          could delay the end a second.
          Killer marionette, exterminating angel,
          he blasts apart
          the soft underbelly of the self,
          the wished-for, never-spoken soul.

The double glazing trembles to come in.

6        Dawn years ago, a heron descended
          from a blinding sky, tried the pond,
          flew on like a buckled umbrella.

Touched by that rare random descent
I felt ridiculous and blessed.

7        Take off my glasses,
          the world is a lottery of shifting surfaces.

Oculist, give me also
myopia of my second sight.