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

off the coast of west Africa, 1478

Always keep land in view:
a narrow strip, sometimes green,
or sometimes sand or rock,
across a lead honey sea,
is the edge of my universe.
Forever south we edge,
where heat holds rain. Sometimes
we see boats off the shore
but cannot escry if the crew
be ape or tailed black devil.
Some day we shall meet.
                                       But now
the sea is quiet. Full of song.
Soft sound the waves. Wood too
has its own slow sough,
caught in the stress of wave.
Hemp and sail coughs, coughs, coughs.

Oxford, September 1990

"Carefully observed yet an image of its time,"
is I suppose the verdict.
The coast line cannot be faulted;
but the interior, quaint with pard and sauvage,
speaks for its age. He landed only to water.
Yet a master with a pen, and yes,
with eyes and memory too.
The Catholic king never gave him his due,
this hard-eyed sea-salt from Naples,
whose maps built a modern world.

off the coast of West Africa, 1478

Case of metal sphere, heavy,
polished by my hand alone.
Within, the magnet afloat,
rocks with the swell of the ship.
This can scan stars, suns,
tell of lines and arcs. With this globe
I fly the world, go beyond
the orb of natural man.
But coasts twist: I watch
and draw a line, a thread on paper,
with which to trace the world.
Compass and map together breed,
enslave the universe.

Oxford, 1990

A sheet of technology
from a culture on the move:
lying beside it, a slender wisp
of fretful anguish,
a twist of lacquered ink...
how well these mandarins savour
the nostalgia of a woman!
The delicate flavour of silken
yearning leavens such verse.

The translation
            TO ONE UNKNOWN
            All night I rest unquiet
            the minutes drop into hours.
            The candle is guttering
            as the wind still gently stirs
            the canopies of my bed.
            Each time that they move apart,
            I see the hand of my love.
            How sharp will be his return.

Oxford, 1990

A map, a poem, aspects of the same;
both made when the world was still unknown,
telling of yesterday.
Alessandro drew an experience
of sea, writing a coast,
living each day without
a certainty the next would be
the same. In his line is etched
his life, as clear as diction in metre.

Northern France, 1244

I build for monks, you say!
I say I build for time!
I take time past and carve
it now for time to come.
The lucid thought of God,
frozen here for men to see
until doom blows its trump.
What is our business
but to use God's world
as if it were Heaven,
and so prepare for what is to come?
For this, we work the craft
of building left by Maitre Guillaume,
which moves towards one end:
            we must learn to find the more perfect:
            each step of knowledge moves us
            one level closer to heaven.

Oxford, 1991

Coincidence is a
choice link in chance;
more than happy hazardy.
Three documents on my desk:
an old map printed new,
a book of verse translated,
and now arrived a ticket
for travel: all set out below
my photograph of gothic St Austen.
On this desk, three continents meet,
as do four ways of thought.

Northern France, 1245

These I build are boxes.
No more. But boxes so high
the weight would thrust to earth
could we not use God's law of
counterweight to build
a wall that strives to heaven.
The craft is in knowing weight,
weight to hold an arch in place,
transfer its thrust from arch to arch.
This is God's science and is manís.

Varanasi January, 1992

an ash sand monoscape
plundered by time; crumbling forts;
and bitter cold on the Ganges at dawn.
In the pigeon grey turgid flow,
believers ablute oblivious.
Movement is slow in Varanasi's
man jammed ways. Grey the sky,
grey as the ashes of the ghat
which dutifully dawdles death.
Pilgrim like, I buy a grey
blanket for warmth, since Sarnath
too would be cold, despite the warmth
of Chunar stone Buddhas.
This once fecund green
and granting lushness that
nurtured Aryan scholars
as disputatious as Socrates,
setting theological revolutions alive
and Prince Siddhãrtha on his travels,
is now eroded, carved, worn grey.
A land used too much
and past its time.

on the Yangtze River, 729

Friends say it is an exile:
only those who lose favour
travel the gorges to Sichuan.
My nickname 'Gentle Wind' -
I disturb but never destroy.
But then... one word spoken too loud,
recorded by those who fear me.
The man who was called 'Water Clock'
uses the whisper behind a fan:
the Son of Heaven must hear all things.
Then my seal is stolen
and it is said I have lost it
...as indeed I have.

off the coast of West Africa, 1479

The king will always want more coast:
"press south to the islands of spice."
But to see what is beyond
the edge of the map, beyond
the narrow strip sometimes green,
sometimes sand or rock
across the lead honey sea.
To write the inside of the map,
that is the task I choose.

Sichuan Province, China, 730

But who would trade a breeze
that blows soft mist for the dust
on a Ch'ang-an street?
Now in my bamboo-grove lodge,
time drops my own: sharpens the skills
long rested: the brush, the block,
the zest of black ink, fine paper,
rare dance of calligraphy.
And so my revenge begins:
seven syllables of eight
lines to circulate to friends:
eight lines of discretion,
but all who read will know.

The poem
            TO ONE UNKNOWN
            all night rest not quietly
            watch water measuring hours
            candle burn out before dawn
            gentle wind blow move curtain
            think it may be opening
            always watch when movement comes
            look for hand that means a friend
            when return wind blow again

West Africa, 1479

The storm we met was brewed in hell:
a wind to wipe a mountain flat;
demon screeching yellow cloud;
the rain cut daggers in our flesh.
A shuddering sound is wood
driven hard in sand.
But ships do not die too fast.
I waited; wind and wave dropped;
I swam ashore
to see beyond the map.

Northern France, 1249

Two men fell from
the scaffold today.
Neither did live.
And now the winter sets in.
Snow from the east.
The wind from the north.
We shiver. Wrap our legs
in straw to work.
But in the cold, hands blunder.
God can never blunder
nor tolerate man's blunder,
which desecrates His work,
abhors the perfect world.
Once blunder is done,
its march will stamp down time.

West Africa, 1479

The village no more than twelve huts.
They did not know what to do with me;
left to ripen in the sun
while the talk went apace elsewhere,
until the sun went down and I was fed.
I dug hand in pot.
No man feeds those he fears.

Sichuan Province, 733

Today there was talk with a farmer
"My life," he said, "is food.
Your manners touch me little.
Your paintings are mountains that cannot
be climbed with water never wet.
To most you mean just tax and war,
and each the other feeds.
Though here in the country, you think
as you have always thought,
thinking shared by only
your kindred, clan and kind.
But can you make, as I can make,
or as my wife makes, nutrient
from grain, from leaf, from egg
from berry, nut and meat?"

Oxford, March 1992

Had we only what we see,
one could never know
or ever have known.
Have we more than what we see?
Niels Bohr bowing before Baltic winds
reduced quantum behaviour
to an instrument reading.
Read a figure today:
find a double helix tomorrow.
Culture is an inference
a construct we build,
rebuild continually.

Africa, 1483

This then the home I found
these ebony men not sure
if I be god, white monkey
or both. Home hot and humid.
And so the vast wife of comfort given me.
Slow haul of learning to speak
again. Become a child
and bathe in the flow of words.
The food at first is harsh.
Black insects bite my darkening skin.
Sickness comes... and goes.
I am left alone, the monkey god
inside the edge of the map.