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

I was rough clay
shaped shapeless, hard.
                                                                                       You came.
You saw my finer self, a self unseen;
you moulded me in finest wax, each crest and hollow
image of the perfect now; and I, expression of your perfect
                                                                                       skill,
began to see my finer self, began to be whom I could be,
took up the daily work of being at the edge of me.
                                                                                         You left.
                                                                                       She came.

She loved me, yes, she cared; but hadn’t your consummate skill,
your art in knowing now, and what will be, your touch
- jolts me to the edge, sharpens sags of time -
that modified minutely, day by day, so I was always me.
Without command, she needed certainty.
And I, without your daily touch, felt myself slipping away.
                                                                           We made the deal.

She drove iron pins through feeling wax into forgotten clay,
and plastered me in clay, carefully, and smiled a last
                                                                       encouraging smile
before she walled me in.
While it was soft, I felt embalmed; when it went hard, I felt
                                                                                       entombed.
                                                              I had become her investment.

     In the dark       turned upside down      lowered into furnace heat
                  such heat       such pain       (shrivels the heart)
                        wax   -   self!   -   melting...          weeps away
         empty                               black                               nothing
              a scream, the scream of me - my self,      gone      absence
                                  remained           emptiness
                  between two things; all space rushed in, I hurtled out.
                       into space; for a moment knew myself - as absence
     for a moment knew infinity that did not fold back into itself...
Boiling bronze poured into me, punched empty out, filled choking
                                                                                                 me.
                                                                            I fainted quite away.

Came to in darkness, solid, as I’d been... but not the same.
Clay cracked away, light, air.., but, touched, I do not feel the
                                                                                            same.
Clay quarried out, runners and riders cut away, filed and chased
to a fineness impossible in wax - almost, they say,
                      ‘Perfection’,                      ‘Timeless’,
and all that.
                                                                              She stands by me,
safe with my unchangingness.                                              And me?

Oh yes, it’s nice to know there’ll be no droop, no sag,
that I’ll always be like this, be me, without effort, this, me.
But, oh, at night, when all is flux
when she lies like wood

Oh how I miss soft wax, miss your knowing touch.

A little clay inside me, reminds me where I’m from.
My smart patina’d bronze, shows what I an.
Only my memory, tells me what I’ve lost.