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

written with the invaluable musical & spiritual assistance of Gambirria and Jaiku

She showed me to the Story House
The Lady of the Estate
Bumping into tables
In a pas de deux with fate.
I’m here to kill the spiders
Read the mail and sweep the floor,
As per strict instructions
I left my Buddhist precepts at the door.

Washing windows for the blind
She can feel the shine
I can see myself and just beyond
She pours another glass of wine

She’s a legendary elder, of a savage,
Rich, sophisticated tribe; all their paintings
Blaze around her: the omniscient, sightless scribe.
But the ghosts of all the artists hang
Askew and dissolute. Accounts of stinging insults
In arrears. Acid tongues now rendered
Mute. For the authors of the brush strokes
Only words could let her see
Are stumbling in the gutters
Between the public
And the shooting galleries.

Washing windows for the blind
She can feel the shine
I can see myself and just beyond
She pours another glass of wine

The birds lie in the long grass
Stunned, a little bit insane
There’s always innocent victims
Of a newly rinsed, transparent pane

The house is open to all comers, Seekers after truth
Arrive to feast on knowledge, philosophy and art
Not to mention luscious dishes, served around the hearth.
Between the dainty tea cakes, smoked fish and goose pate
Trays of finest cheeses, wooden bowls of tender greens
They share perceptions with the Lady of the glories all around
Offer poems they have written to the alchemy of sound
Await her next pronouncement like a flower most profound
Praise her famous hospitality, the epitome of couth.

Yes, she’s surrounded by soothsayers
Who fully comprehend her Leo moon
And soothe the slaves she batters
When they sing just one note out of tune.

Is it because she cannot see
Our eager faces fall
That she derides our pissy coffee
Decides to change our travel plans
Rejects our knee jerk pity, slaps away our helping hands
Denounces pretty maidens as scheming bits of fluff
Upbraids our dim fixation on the colours of her stuff?
Takes the meekest
And the weakest
To the wall?

Washing windows for the blind
She can feel the shine
I can see myself and just beyond
She pours another glass of wine

I haven’t known her very long
Yet it seems I’ve come to see
Her matchless wit, her love-torn bed
Her peerless social standing in a world of sighted fools
Could be any warrior woman’s destiny.

Perhaps she has to dominate
To reassure herself that she is here
How hard to live inside the dark
In even gentle silence
You might disappear.