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

1

A white street on a council estate with a few cars; kids always in the street, and between the houses opposite, an alley leading to a field where private houses were being built of orange brick. He’d no idea where it led, a muddy path between the houses, on through curving fields to a stile and a far horizon.

2

To travel into the work.
to make good time for it,
to know that even the scantest moment is open,
persuading a place that is curved and green and muddy.
a place to walk beyond the permitted,
a stone to stand on.

3

Little boy Daniel,
       chuckbuddy,
       terror,
you little horror

Grab me by the finger if you want
your clean blue eyes
flashing into the speeding moment,
your bright and restless hands
pick up, then toss away
a chaos of blue and red and yellow plastic bricks,
explode your little plastic tower
with a lion-throated roar,
destroyer of time
a whirlpool of fear and gleeful appetite,
wake every day with a burst of words
demanding play
       you little tyke
       you monster
       sweetling
       munchkin
           devil -

4

I see myself as a little boy looking into the mirror. By tilting its wings he created multiple reflections, curving away until they disappeared. A clever alignment of wings to left and right and he saw the back of his own head.

     He hurried between the houses into the open field: a red and muddy path to a fence with a stile. There were diggers and mixers, corrugated iron stretched across holes and ditches. Away to the left, to a high green wall with nettles and big old trees, he wandered. The boy found a hole in the wall where he stood on a stone and stooping, saw.

     What I see, and what he saw, was an enormous house of green and yellow stone with a tower and castellations; a greenhouse, big and old, along the nearest wall; a man, an old man, pottering about. He had a hat on, big grey gloves.

     Then it’s gone. And there was suburbia, white iron gates and lawns and dimpled glass and little dogs. A lane where stories opened, sunlight, gutters and streets; then growing up, there were dreams about sexual fountains and strangers and mountains, and in between them all recurrent dreams of ruins.

5

To push on into the work,
to open Time for it,
to write a place that is curved and green,
to see beyond the permitted
       with new blue eyes.

So grab my little finger if you want
and show me.

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