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

I am nothing.
I shall always be nothing.
It is not my wish to be nothing.
Because of this, I carry in me all the dreams of the world.

. . . . . .

I have missed everything.

. . . . . .

How can I tell what I shall become, I who do not know what I am?
To be what I think? But I imagine myself so many things!
And there are so many who think themselves the same thing
That they outnumber possibility!

. . . . . .

I have dreamed more than Napoleon achieved.
I have held against my hypothetical heart more humanities than Christ.
I have secretly created philosophies no Kant has ever written.
But I am, perhaps always should be the one from the attic
Although I don’t live there;
I shall always be someone not born for this;
I shall always be one who had qualities, no more;
I shall always be one who has waited for a gate to open in a wall without
                                                                                                  one
Who sang the song of the infinite in a brothel
And heard God’s voice in a blocked-up well.
Believe in myself? No, in nothing.
May Nature pour out on my feverish head
Her sun, her rain, the wind which tousels my hair,
And the rest, let it come if it must, it not it does not matter.
Hearts in thrall to the stars,
We have conquered the whole world before leaving our beds.
But we were awakened and it was dark,
We rose and all was strange to us
When we left the house there was the whole world,
The Solar System, the Milky Way and Infinity . . . . .

. . . . .

(Eat your chocolates, little one!
Eat your chocolates!
Know there are no metaphysics in the world but chocolates.
Know that all the faiths don’t teach more than chocolates.
Eat, greedy one, eat!
It only I could eat chocolates with the same conviction you do!
But as for me, I think, and when I lift the silver paper of a leaf of tin-foil
I let everything fall to the ground, as if I chucked my life away.)
At least let the bitterness of what I shall never be remain
The rapid scribbling of these lines
Point of departure for the impossible.

. . . . .

I have made myself something I didn’t know,
And what I could have made of myself, I have not.
The domino I played was not the right one.
I was immediately taken for what I was not, didn’t contradict it, and was
                                                                                             misled.
When I wished to lift my mask
It stuck to my face.
When at last I did succeed in raising it and looked in the glass
I had aged in the meantime.
I was drunk, no longer knew where to put the domino I hadn’t picked up
I threw the mask far away and slept in the dressing-room
Like a dog tolerated by the management
Because inoffensive
And I am writing this to prove I am sublime.

Musical essence of my useless lines
Can I meet you as something of my own creation,
And not remain always opposite the tobacco kiosk
Forcing underfoot the will to live,
Like a carpet on which a drunkard stumbles
Or a straw mat stolen by gipsies and worth nothing.

. . . . .

But a man has entered the tobacco kiosk (to buy tobacco?)
And plausible reality suddenly fells me.
I half rouse myself, energetic, convinced, human
With the intention of writing these lines where I declare the opposite
I light a cigarette, thinking about writing them
And savour in the cigarette a liberation of thought.
I follow the smoke like a personal itinerary
And enjoy, in a moment sensitive and capable,
The freedom of speculation
And the consciousness that metaphysic is only a result of illness.

. . . . .

Next I throw myself on my chair
And continue smoking.
What ever Destiny grants me, I shall smoke.

(If I married my washerwoman’s daughter
Perhaps I should be happy.)
Upon that, I leave the chair. I go to the window.

The man has just quitted the kiosk (keeping the money in his trousers
                                                                                          pocket?)
Yes, I know him, it is Esteves who has no theories.
(The owner of the kiosk comes to the door.)
As if by divine instinct, Esteves has returned and seen me.
He salutes me, I greet him “Hullo Esteves!” and the world
Is remade for me, without ideal or hope, and the owner of the kiosk smiles.