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

Black lake, sheer black mirror,
                 July breathless on the mountain.

Only the dry possibilities of lizards
in the few stone markers where the well had been,
somewhere else its healing qualities.
No supplicants now entered that remoteness
to bathe their eyes and cure
a grey rim of vision, occlusion of the lens
exchanged for the clarion of light
ringing between air
and the bright curved surface of the lake.

That evening - the few small hawthorns in silhouette -
I found floating lilies: gilt stars
illumined by depths brackish with underlying peat.

How still lake water is and silken in July.
           When we swam, the lily's
thick stems curled round our limbs
                           like tongues of water-horses
dragging us deeper into the lake's shadowed throat.
We rode each other, winding tendrils
            in green reins along our leaping
              fish-white bodies,
                                 in one liquid kiss 
             the water closed into calmness
above our heads,   black glass
where lilies in their yellow constellations
            sushed and murmured into silence.
For hours we lay and slowly watched the stars.

This swimming pool is sharp with echoes
and reeking chlorined water pricks my skin.
Our mouths are aching, empty; the scratched perspex
of our masks protects our narrowed eyes
from the water's sharp ministration, filters only
a chaotic, blurred entanglement of lights.
Within the straight cordoned lanes
it is prohibited to touch - but we are side by side
moving blindly faster always faster, yet
somehow still keeping pace and faith.