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

We take up with the black branch
in the street, it is our support and
control, what we do with life in
the phase now running on. From here
each time the glitter does settle out,
around some lamp, some fried-up
commercial scene we live in
support of and for. Who is this
that may just do the expected
thing; not the magic silence
of the inward eye you may be quite
positive. TV beams romantically into
the biosphere, plant food is our
daily misery. Mine: light & easy,
the victim-path is so absurd.

Misery is that support & control: the
force of sympathy is a claim no one
can pay for. We are indeed supplanted
and I know the light is all bribery,
daylight, electric, the matching stroke.

Uncertain whether the stars of my
inner canopy are part of this
brittle crust I watch them often.
The moon is still silent, I count that
a favour unpurchased, but the
scintillant clusters are the new test:
                           how much then are
                           we run, managed by
                           the biograph & pre-
                           dictive incision, it
must be possible to set the question
up & have it operational, in time
to restore the eye of fate : Lucifer, with-
out any street lamps or TV. The
branch is rained on, it does nothing,
the event is unresponsive / & attending
to such infantile purchase is the
murderous daily income of sympathy.

                          The stars then being 
                          ideas without win-
                          dows, what should we
                          do by watching, is
it true: is it true ? Starlight is the
new torture, seraphic host, punishment
of the visionary excess. What else, they
glide with their income intact, how often
they travel. What they do in this
social favour, that and how with, is
                          it true. The prism
                          of mere life is un-
                          bearable, plants and
                          animals in their
secular changes, eaten up with will-power.
Who would believe in the victim, as, in
such general diversion, who would need to. 
O you who drive past in my dream-car
of the century, lead me by no still waters,
don't touch me with the needle. I'm watch-
ing no one, the torture is immaculate and
conserved, I'd love to go so much it
                          isn't true it
                          really isn't true.