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

Each day I wake to chalk-cob veined with hazel.
These walls: my second skin. My bones are old
and hollow as flutes. Uncarressed by the wind.

What is the song in my marrow? Once I would run
to the banks of the Yare. Small as a faun.
Charlock and field madder riding my hems.

Three slit windows: one eye on the world.
A sliver of Kings Street.Tanners' boys,
fullers', clump by my cell. Listen for heartbeats.

My mother sent me racing to the wharves.
Through stench of tallow.The herrings shone
bronze-silver, with a hundred cold eyes on heaven.

They speak of me, their lady Julian. Bring pain
to my sill, boxed lightning. I break the small bread
of my words, my hands inarticulate with ague.

It came from the south: the terror. Our neighbours
blackened in a day. I shrank from the lumber
of carts, from doors daubed with the other cross.

A mouth at my window. Crimson. The lips
of a guild-merchant. He prays for a Flanders
price for his wool. He breathes Rhenish wine.

I was thirty: the vision held me. I am a hazelnut
cupped in your hand. Our world, your seed.
Enclose me: I am enclosed. O Clavis David.

Sara rustles at my door. My bringer of manchets,
my thread to the living. She smells of hemp,
stoops for the slops. Our sleeves almost touch.

Crowds heaved round my cell. Henry Despencer
routing the streets. Midwives calling for water,
sketching their prayers with scarlet fingers.

Vespers, monks' voices, transepts of song.
I spark a floor-rush. Listen. For love's antiphon.