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

Death has mislaid me.
I must live a meantime,
prepared to be whittled
in its hoop of smoke.

Muscles, veins are patient:
tiny flexions go for nothing
like hopeful smiles
down a night corridor;
tides whisper out
and back, salt blue
long stripped from their current.

My skin mottles and forebears.
Rash and lesion
still map my walk
through the accidental hours.

Soon this capering must end.
Tears of curiosity
will dry where they stain.
Eyes will swoon
into a face released
from the pucker of mood.

Waiting, I keep them all
warm. Throw a cloth
over my fingers. They become
a scuttle of ghosts
at the phone,
brushing the jam of old words
from the earpiece.

I ride my bones to mirrors,
so they may swing and pull
as when I lived
in the colour and shout of it all--

and who I was came at me
in numbers shat from a wall,
headed packs that rattled the morning,
space messages I tackled,
then feared like madmens thoughts
dashed of f in barred sunlight--
then learned, over time, to leave be.

But today must be the last go
for my biddable dobbins.
I have hitched rides,
scratched my arse in the gaze
of forecourt cameras,
flattened my shade
on the roll of a nightboat.
Have cone to stand
where Galway shatters
on dare. The Green Road.
Beyond, the Black Head
in a gust of altitude.

Land rubs off its memory here.
Lush grass thins in a mile,
bruises on stone,
frets in the wake of hill waters.
Dies at last on ledges
like waves frozen
in a race out of history.

A new planet, this.
Here, my goodbyes will sing
weirdly and rich.
True, it pretends the weather
my days have dealt in.
It drops and levels
like a hundred walks
I was swept over
in the grip of my lost father,
my mother long gone
with her love and worries.
Far down, it conjures
a bay in spasm, a coach whose lights
curse hairpin foolery,
two cyclists dripping
from their saddles.

But at my feet are strangers:
crabflowers that hoist colour
found only at the last of sleep;
and roses maybe,
but spared the apologies and lust
written deep on their kind
in the times I’ve clambered beyond.

At the windiest point
they are still and burn on the rain.
Perhaps they alone will stay
once this planet wearies of its tricks,
when water, light and saddles
are wisps of magic.

Perhaps, any moment,
I shall see them crowd the arms
of everyone who turned my days
ripe south or torpid north,
as I walk in a baffled yearning
to whatever flickers or snows
upon that last second.

I set off. Many footsteps
near the turn ahead: could be
housemaster’s march,
slither of seeming friend,
lovers with a final hurt
on their tongue.

The bay darkens.
A sigh melts out of my crown,
flows through my bootcaps.
The flowers nestle now
in pinstripe, working check,
bared arms.

At last,
with one snicker of brakes
far back in that beclouded world.
At last, the slowing
of pump and thud
that had me dumbly stranded.
At last.