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

Even manifold nature has nothing like soap.
A cold bar can seem a stone, hard, self-contained
Withholding its essence in silent disdain
And indifferent to water’s unilateral kiss
– But soap never desires the solipsism of stone.

For a start it emits, at close range, a scent
And sequestration, though blissful, is not permanent.
Signs of stress show on soap when it’s too long alone.
Its bright forehead grows dull, hardens, wrinkles, cracks up.
Though aware that involvement will grind it down
Soap can never renege on its duty to man.

So the summons is feared – but awaited, required.
For as soon as it engages with water
Soap abandons its lapidary, separatist pose
And becomes lithe, elusive, fish-like, hard to hold
(No – more octopus-like. When it slithers and dives
It creates a cloud in which to hide).

For those who can manage to keep hold
(Coquetry of course in the slipperiness)
While stimulating it with water in the appropriate dose
Soap is nothing like stone – but exults, blathers, foams
Throws up profligate clusters of shimmering spheres
Scented iridescent evanescent cities of air
And makes hands lissome, supple, magnanimous, blithe
More than glad to facilitate change so sublime
(From which, unbelievably, hands emerge pure).

Then if the soap is left in the water
They join in an unsolemn marriage of pleasure
For which soap does not don a gown
But the intimate garb of dalliance
– Silken kimono and harem pants.

Afterwards both are profoundly transformed.
The bar is soft, indolent, loath to emerge
Deep in amniotic luxury, yielding its all
Happy to perish in dissolute joy
And the water, once limpid, is stirred up, perturbed,
Entirely suffused by a nacreous cloud
Now so sensitive any touch makes it respond
With the lover’s eternal aerostatic pretension
– To effervesce, form bubbles, take to the air.

Pastel prestidigitator! Fragrant agent of change!
(Itself willing to undergo radical change
– Marble hardness and coolness to warm mucilage)
Amphibious ingot! Susceptible pebble!
Loquacious stone ovoid! Slow-motion grenade!

Fact: though prophets would have us immersed in the Jordan
And philosophers down the deep dark well of truth
Man may not purge himself by means of water alone
But must take his soiled hands to the humble wash bowl
With its unassuming servitor who turns none away
And is a true democrat – response always the same 
Never taking on the tone or the mark of the other
(Though from time to time it consents to wear
A mischievous monogram of pubic hair).

And was ever giving so complete?
Essence not merely proffered, involved but used up.
When the service ends so might the soap.
Literally a life of dissipation.

Ruthless market-force Darwinists should ponder on this.
It certainly moves me, reluctant old stone
(I believe the banal is our natural element
But have never learned to swim in it).

Put your sweet-smelling clean hands together for soap
Which dissolves the seductive allure of the stone
Whose apparent nobility it reveals as a sham.
It is not strong but misanthropic, stingy and weak
To justify the refusal to give by refusing to take.