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

I have not seen the ember-red land of tears you know so well,
   the great dead trunks of buildings, hollow arrows
that plunge deep into sky. I do not know what it is to chop cane
   with sisters and grandparents, in brackish water up to the waist,
cold night still all-consuming as air-raid sirens savage the breeze.
   I will never hear my father speak of pressing horseflesh
through a grinder to feed zoo lions, of garroting the family pig
   for meat and collecting the slushy blood in old ceramic jars to sell
to santeras who use it as the spring-source of spells and penny hexes.
   Amigo, I would like to have helped your fragile, still-gathering
shape when the sweet pulp of your youth knew these things not.
   Let us make fire and devour these past sufferings entirely,
let us silence those souls that pinprick your dreams full of holes;
   veo moverse tu futura, la negra noche se acumula en la boca--
I see the course of your future, the dark night swilling round in your
                                                                                            mouth --
   but the abiding moon determines nothing here in America,
here in the midst of waves of friendship, where your name, your
                                                                                        occupation,
   your condition can be changed like garment to garment.
This is a land of possibility, amigo--let us pour the ashes of the past
   into the trembling bright of dawn, the birth of day almost, again, a seed.