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

50.

Yesterday, Licinius, didn’t we while away the hours
like a couple of naughty school boys at my lap top

pissing about together, sniggering at a good joke -
we each in turn whacked off some light verses

one in this metre then one more in that for good
measure, just for a laugh to match excellent wine.

After that you bet I left all fired up
by your wit and charm, Licinius, so much

so poor little me lost his appetite for dinner,
nor could I find relief with a lie down or shut-eye,

but tossed and turned in bed all night
long longing for daybreak that I might

return to your side and chatter away some,

arms and legs aching after all that
I lay in bed more or less half-dead

and wrote this little ditty for you my dear
so you can see the state you’ve left me in

don’t be rough, pretty please, don’t chuck out my prayers
I beg of you, my nearest and dearest: there’s always Nemesis

who might demand payback with menaces -
she’s the bitch goddess you don’t want to mess with.

31.

Of all islands, Sirmio, and peninsulas

you are the pearl of all the two Neptunes
either crystal-clear lakes or salty oceans...

how ecstatic I am - what delight to gaze upon you again

it’s hardly credible, the flat lands of Thynia and Bithynia
pushed well behind me, to re-discover you safe and sound.

Oh, what joyfulness to have packed troubles off when the mind,
dog-tired, dumps duty (that baggage) in the road where it belongs

- foot-sore, home at last, we truly have arrived at our own front
                                                                                       door,
and thank the gods to rest our weary heads between the sheets,
                                                                                             home

again home again jiggerdy-jig, with it all worth the candle.
Hello, gorgeous! Sirmio, aren’t you happy your Master’s

happy too - lapping, glittering, Lydian waters -
laughter in the ripples laughs all the way home.

51.

That man, it seems to me, is equal to a god,
Or, if I may say so, that man is superior to the gods
Sat opposite looking who listens
And hears you over and over

It’s your pretty laughter that rapes me the wretched
One of all my senses, Lesbia, simultaneously
For when I gaze up at you I lose
All ability to chatter away

My tongue numb, limbs heated to white-hot,
Ears ringing with a sound all of their own
Accord, a double night falls across
The twinklings of my eyes.

Leisure, Catullus, never a good idea for you,
Leisure leaves you energised, over-stimulated.
Leisure: the thing that unseated kings, lost
And ruined magnificent cities.

60.

Was it a lioness from the Libyan foot-hills

or was it Scylla that spat you howling
her vulva which bore a mind so hard

so cruel you dash the prayer from
this believer’s lips, oh stony-hearted love?

65.

Although I’m utterly drained, Hortalus, by endless grief
and a caring interference distracts my attention from

the know-it-all Virgins, now my mind’s eye births still
more still-borns for the Muses a vision sent wobbly

to a vanishing point over the choppy estuary
for just the other day a wave rose on the full flood

of Lethe to lap my brother’s pretty white foot snatched
from our view, buried in the ground at Troy, crunched

beneath the beach at Rhoetum, shall I never listen
to your voice or speak to you a word I never shall

dearest brother who I love more than Life with a capital “L”
never to even see you? But evermore shall sing

the sad songs for your dying, just like Daulias sings
the nightingale between the boughs and the shades

of boughs mourning Itylus she admits the murdering of

nevertheless in the face of such sorrow, Hortalus
I’ll despatch these Battiades of Callimachus

so you’ll know your requests were not scattered to four winds

forgotten by yours truly just as if a peach
mailed (registered) by her lover as a sign

to a pretty girl drops “plop” from the folds of the dress
covering her bosom, just as her mother upsets the apple-

cart and enters the bedroom, the fruit bumps all along the floor

and a ruddy flush blooms across both the girl’s cheeks.