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

The castle: it is conical, symmetrical, rectangular
The castle: it is square, asymmetrical, circular
The castle: black, dull, dark, the colours a labyrinth
of likely exits from the picture, likely and unlikely

Sandro della Quercia poured the darkness of night
with a spoon of raven feathers

That spoon is the castle

The foliage has always two sides; front and back
The way that joins them, Sandro has found, is elliptic

That way is the castle

Some beasts of prey not only strike their victim
but play with it: feel the smaller body tremble
The victim carries in its own body one still
smaller it perpetually slaughters

That slaughter is the castle

Once as a child Sandro della Quercia saw
a birdman building a stronghold on a cliff
When the birdman noticed the boy he only leered
with all of his black beak and flew off into the night mist

The birdman's flight is the castle

One morning when Sandro della Quercia lifted the glass
of water by his bedside the bottom fell to the floor
shattered by some tension inherent in the glass
All that day Sandro was troubled by
what the pressure on his skull could bring about

That dread is the castle

One afternoon in town Sandro della Quercia heard
from a traveller how orientals seek emptiness and calm
Nothing of what he heard surprised him much
but what did surprise him was this lack of surprise
In his room he sat thinking at length of what the man said,
burnt against the wall, each breath gave back a note

That note is the castle

Sandro della Quercia had for long dreamt of travelling, far
journeys, not just those trips to neighbouring towns
He longed northwards, to feel the cold bite on his skin, to see
the landscapes flooded with snow, feel the stony ice in his beard
One January morning snow fell in Florence, the streets white,
the cathedral dome glimmering with frost, but Sandro lay
gravely ill that day, forbidden to go out and feel the snow

That longing for coldness is the castle

Sandro della Quercia was walking one afternoon with league-
long steps across the stones of a Mediterranean shore
not far from Genoa, the stone was red and wet from the sea's
bleeding gap, the stone was black and dry as coal
Sandro della Quercia discovered a hole from which
a seething underground stream welled up in regular
identical surges distorted only by a soughing wind
Sandro, who thought each part of life unique, marvelled

That regularity is the castle

God's longing for something to exist and fill the world
corresponds to Sandro's desire for a totally empty space
The fallen angel's dream of a world peopled by empty individuals
Sandro could never accept, condemned it perpetually yet
saw his own empty space as where he could most fully
see God's riches, but it was in his efforts to people the world
with these that God was often deaf to all communications
therefrom and when God one day decided to listen to the world
he found it peopled but in its language for the Most High dumb

That dumbness is the castle

The castle has at least nine angles,
angles turning in towards each other
The castle has at least as many angles
as the parts into which it can be divided
The castle has at least one angle which
is part of another castle