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

No. 5

“But detest birds, because they cannot kiss’, somehow
I had summoned a grave presence of great strength and truth.
Dressed in a shift
She went to the cupboard and brought out bright cheese,
The great table was scrubbed white, and first we ate
And then we loved there, where she spread the great white bolsters,
Later we took our breakfast off the same white boards,
And dined there, after the meat had bled. We could kiss.
But she scattered crumbs for the birds, silly girl,
Returning her kindness those birds ate her plums,
Silly girl, in that shift among the fruit trees,
A grave presence of great strength and truth
Treading with bare feet among the waspish cavernous plums.
She was cavernous, but not waspish, she and the soft earth
Swarmed with liquors that felt, and among the trees
Hung with ripe fruit, leaf-caverns bloomed and squeezed.
The earth was wool-soft between the ancient boulders.
Once it was raining and I came up to the garden gate
And saw by the sundial an old woman or a young one I couldn’t tell
Until the living rain had drenched her
To the young skin where the white shift clung. Coming over the hill
I thought the sea was there
But it was slate roofs, inside
I met her by the choppy fire
And we drank our healths. She said, “I can see
This morning you took up a black thread — look
I give you the white, take up the white strain,
See me in the wet orchard in my shift
And you will want me in the black earth in my shift,
Suddenly in the black”. She stood
In towering white at the end of the orchard walk
Like a soft waterfall with chuckling caves and
Laid down in black and beckoned and the coloured mud
Clothed us with rainbows, and I saw her rise
In bridal white from farmyard muck: I saw white
Gathered again from farmyard much. I am always soiled,
And white, she says, I had summoned
A grave presence of great strength and truth and I thought she said
I advise you to do the same. You watch
The cowpat in its corrupt stiff jerkin crack
And the rooks above like wheeling slots of night, I want you
To see that primrose at your feet
That knocks against the stone.
When the warm flower knocks against the rock
Sometimes the rock opens, that is something
You’ve not seen yet,
Nothing in what I have done already, so
What you tell of me
Is not love, yet. It’s called idolatry.