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

Leander of Abydos, the champion youth
Of Asia Minor; Hero, our heroine,
Priestess of Venus at her easternmost,
The shrine at Sestos. Europe and Asia once
Had married here: divine sectarians
Had interposed the swirling Hellespont,
A no-man’s-land between such boys and girls.
Their parents knew, and loathed, their opposite,
Different in all but that; their acid feud
Poisoned the straits between. How bright Hero
And proud Leander ever came to meet
Is thus mysterious; but having met,
They had to meet again. But how, if not
By open boat; and never at all by day?
How else: Leander swam the stretch by night,
His stroke set on the simple lantern tower
Where Hero watched, and where she nightly found him,—
Naked and wet,—and when he scaled the wall,
Shaking and breathing at her window-bay;
She let him in, and tried to keep him warm.

So for a month those perfect lovers loved,
Secret and safe, until their sliding stars
Revolted from them, and the weather went.
Then seven days and nights, storm beat the straits;
Waves heaved at the clouds, and heavy clouds
Breasted the waves to bomb the waves with tons
More water. Sodden and fearful, Hero wept;
Her lover, meanwhile, stormed more than the storm,
And as his Hero stood or lay at Sestos,
He could not bear to wait in Abydos;
At last, though moon and stars hid in their doors,
He threw his luck into the mile of black,
Which filled his lungs and stomach all at once,

And after a round of pitch and toss spat up
His blenched and bloodless corpse on Sestos shore.
That night Hero could hardly sleep, she felt
Such a foreboding: until before cock-crow
Catching a slumber, she dreamt the pair of them
Were playing checkers on a board of pearl
With pebbles at the bottom of the sea.

Her waking sight: Leander’s carcass laid
Among dead fish there on her lap of shore.
At which a boisterous rack of tidal ridge
Ran in, and dragged him from her. Piteously
She strode in after to complete the wreck,
And the waves closed over her loving head.