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

This is the time of chaos and roses smell of skin.
‘The Arrival Of The Wolf’ Goran Sinic

They are writing letters to people they do not know.
Words get out, leave the territory, travel to the other world
of normal awakenings, safe gardens, schools where the children
only play at war.
They are writing letters like this all the time to keep other ideas
in the earth, to smother terror, to murder what might murder them.
To America and Canada, England and Germany and then other countries
never heard of, imagined, ideal.
Then they receive letters back.

These letters are about air tickets and money enclosed and the people
who can get you out and the way to dig a tunnel in your head
and what the rest of Europe will do and how the President spends each
day on his knees in the White House praying for them.

These letters are about culture and history and spiritual values and poetry
and the value of identity and what we all learn of suffering.

They are written to people they do not know
on pieces of curtain and bits of wallpaper
and a few also pick up the telephone receiver
and wait to hear the silence speaking.

They want to hear the President’s prayers
and what he says to himself when he gets up from his knees.
They want to hear what the Pope says when all he can hear
is silence and all he can see is sunshine and saints.
They want to hear what their children prophesy
in Germany, in the USA, in their graves.

They want to hear what the rats say and the
birds who have learned to love fire
and the soldiers who have gone quite mad.

They are writing with bits of pencil
and ancient typewriters and each word begins
its journey into the other world and waves goodbye
and the silence that is left
the whiteness of the silence
the knowledge of the silence
sits in the room like
a rumour of angels.