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

We come down to the city
and the city climbs, marching with us
and the Hudson at the western edge of morning,
of seven o’clock with no direction amid the birds.

Orpheus has a flute that spins in the river,
and the river

– Hudson made of the substance of Paradise,
Hudson of drifting sky following its path,
Hudson of fluid tree,
Hudson of vast, liquid harmony,
Hudson gathered in the rushing of stars and tempests,
Hudson illuminated and calmed
by the fragrance of boats and the sound of fishermen;
Hudson peeling away the bark of almond trees
against the boundless, proparoxytonic swiftness of autumn;
Hudson flowing in the bottom of the eyes, beside the spark of    
                                                                                          lightning;
Hudson dressed in magnetic clouds branded by hurricanes;
Hudson sending iridescent messages with the writing of swallows;
Hudson revealing the invisible shape of the depths;
Hudson, in its sound, equal to angelic wrath,
equal to divine conch shells repeating eternity’s misty song
instead of the song of water;
Hudson rushing toward the spumes’ multitude,
Hudson soaring toward the branches’ crowd;
Hudson fresh and salty;
Hudson on a journey to hear
its name transfigured in the estuary;
Hudson giving way to the currents from above,
which sometime descend to the midday of man;
Hudson inventing and passing dreams to the sirens;
Hudson finishing chores
the simple waters of creeks could not;
Hudson opening roads for the seeds;
Hudson taking its creatures to green, undulating abysses,
places filled with fish, like radiant fortresses at once gigantic and  
                                                                                            minute.
Pioneer of love,
Hudson tolling and undressing and granting
the surroundings of shepherds, towers and reigning bees
in the longest blue, in the highest tremor of Spring;
Hudson biting on its banks the planetary tides;
Hudson followed and preceded by the splendors of its body;
Hudson with no shadow
– other than Orion’s shadow over an imaginary rose;
Hudson falling toward the wind,
Hudson climbing toward the angel and the day’s bastions;
Hudson known by men
and deciphered by the sun;
Hudson that only hushes in reaching the sand;
Hudson descending to the earth on Jacob’s ladder.

Tower with a crystal-clear name and a height of dove;

Tower of workers,

Tower of the morning,

Tower of Living God;

Throne of the firstborn tree,
Throne of sylvan multiplications,

Throne of the morning species,

Throne of the unknown water.

Beloved, loving Hudson possessed by immense creatures;

River that we divided between us,
and still remained that part of its breath destined for its solar acts.

Orpheus has a flute that spins in the river;
and the river ripples, pauses,
takes a step along the midday hour
and is now a poplar raving under the blazing light.
Orpheus plays the flute that spins in the river
(without it, we would never be followed by this golden crowd
and this marching city with buildings ablaze in the afternoon
and fresh at dawn, snatched from the clouds like prophets;
buildings vanishing in the mist like fugitives of Earth,
and in the storm, strong and mysterious like soldiers
in a battle arranged by time.
Offspring of El Cid Campeador,
his sword naked and powerful like autumn).