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

      1
Out of brown walls a village appears, a field.
A shepherd rots upon an ancient stone.
The forest edge enfolds blue animals,
The gentle leaves that into silence fall.

The brown foreheads of the farmers. Long tolls
The evening bell; lovely is pious custom,
The Saviour’s black head in a clump of thorns,
The chamber cool which death redeems.

How pale the mothers are. Blueness sinks down
On glass and chest cherished by their proud sense;
And a white head advanced in years stoops low
To grandchild which drinks milk and stars.

      2
The poor man who in spirit lonely died
Climbs waxen up an ancient path.
The apple tree sinks bare and still
Into the colour of their fruit, which then turned black.

The roof of paltry straw still arches
Over the sleep of cows. The blind milkmaid
appears in yard; blue water that laments;
A horse’s skull stares from a rotten gate.

The idiot with dark meaning speaks a word
Of love, which dies away in the black bush,
Where she does stand in slender shape of dream.
The evening in moist blueness still rings on.

     3
Branches flay windows, stripped by the southern breeze.
In the peasant woman’s womb there grows a savage pang.
Through her arms trickles black snow;
Golden-eyed owls flutter about her head.

The walls stare barren and besmirched with grey
Into cool darkness. In fevered bed freezes
The pregnant body brazenly ogled by the moon.
Before her chamber a dog has breathed his wretched last.

Three men step darkly through the gate
With scythes that have been broken in the field.
Through window rattles the red evening wind;
A black angel out of it appears.