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

And every island fled away,
and the mountains were not found,
                            Revelations XVI, 20

Our island
we built it
under the arrogance of the winds.
We stole it
rock by rock
from chaos.
In these faults, these patiently
named faces, fear
rises every day.

Our houses
marked out from the stones
by a touch of white -
coolness surprised
by a hidden seething
deep in the quarries.

To stay there
in silence listening to
further islands growing.

Time learns its object lesson
the arid and the sweet
in the offered hollows of our bodies
our pulps still warm,
seeking the perfection of lime
as we whiten the path to the precipice.
 
We grew up between incredulous sea
and craggy walls -
the light ferments
in the hollows bumps ridges
left by human hands
-  and sometimes on a window -
as if there were a soul
to be burnt there.
Before us these winds, this darkness
prowed open
and you read and you speak
and you don’t understand.

On our islands there was always a path,
perhaps the same one, winding among rocks,
always a turning, perhaps the same one,
unfastening something bright among the browns and greys,
white flame undressing -
gently flared thigh where
an unknown desire waits.
Inside: penumbra of oil and incense
holding in its embrace
blackened by love.

We trusted our entrails
and earth’s dim sorrow.
Our only weapon this blind whitewash,
inexorable questioner.
Later, in the thick of night,
the igneous skeleton of a sea-urchin.

Disclosure - blush of an alphabet.
Quarter past midnight at Evanghelismos -
the abbess, rigidly in charge of this
navigation, greets the arcs of song,
flesh burnt in her voice, animal
claws dug into the sea.
 
The great stretched skin of our iniquities -
grass fires gliding over the waters,
a plain of shivers, shards, broken glass,
electric crackling of the amorous pelage,
fissuring pain, ulcerating kiss.

Among the haunches and rumps of collapsed water,
the whistling of Furies dessicates our souls,
skeleton of sparks scattered in the wind
O Night, the mother who bore me! (1)
Cavernous cough of the one-stroke engine
spitting its black lungs into the mist -
What grief enters me by the heart,
What grief? Oh, night my mother (2) -

This harbour, and another and another,
perhaps the same one,
squid fastened to the walls -
men crouched on steps of blueness
tie and untie the old browns of the weft,
of an autumn risen again from muddy depths.
The same evening, the same night perhaps,
emptied of dreams and tied to the mast
while the underworld of tattered roses
migrates from east to west.
Perhaps the same dawn,
its throat enflamed,
and the oars thrust into the flesh,
wounding the dark fire where the arcs bleed.

Someone consumes me in brightness.
Their capillaries beat heavy on the edge
of a vast network of veins in the stone.
Someone of unspeakable cruelty and gentleness
needed my opacities.
 
To maintain this modest threshold before infinity
where the marble is easily cracked, the tongue easily fleeced.
We offer to the spread this sea marked out in flames,
this noise of hearts and bones -
a little happiness carved up on the shores
and the long ritual cry that breaks the bodies
and redeems the night.

Enough that one nerve make its way into the world -
one hand move among the massed stalks
and one voice falls for these fragile lights.
One tear enough for absence
and the noise of time in the pores,
and fires are lit beside stones
where the traveller was given olive and wine.

Happiness was never enough, nor this song.
We had to cut pain and its unaesthetic cry
into the snow-blue nitrogen of nerves -
the murmur of roots cancelled every day.

The sea is there, and who shall drain it? (2)

So many hands fidget under our eyelids -
here and there depending on the depth you can
see future strata where, once the waters have receded,
other suns will recognise you.

Reefs of villages, shipwrecks, sea-plume,
glimmer of sar in the recess -
a very old man translucent among the stones.

Nothing I can change in what I say. (2)
 
The sky, the sea :
a single colour -
no caesura, no ruffling between bodies.

But down there
at the drifting centre -
withheld cry
gulf of wings that breathes us in -
perhaps a boat.

There is always one evening when you stop
inadequate before the sea.
Strait.
So many foliate movements,
deep gestures seeking air.
Then the sheer silence of being there
astounds the earth, and discharges the laws.
Acquitted -
witness this sudden freedom in you, of the spread.

My light has been the light of darkness... (3)

In the matrix of night
on the black face of the waters
a dream gathers forms -
you no longer know what earthquake
or shout augments the winds -
a door that space knew nothing about
is pushed open by the gust -

The step, the hand, the pulse
gradually returned to the surf -
the caiques leave at dawn
shining slightly on their stems
where someone plucks them,
leaving the open sea unimpaired.

We no longer know the threads that bind
these resurrection winds
to the uninhabited deeps.
And whence came these two streaks of fire
that transfixed us for an instant
so clear a pain deep in our loins?

This sea rushed and plundered by the winds -
our road mended with the debris of anger
furrow of cunning where a hope hesitates.

The asphodels stand at right angles to the sea.
Winter will be gentle -
White flames protect us.
Bits of memory off the broken window -
colours of forgetting.
Discard your sun melodious squid -
you have so loved the dark sea.
A fisherman detaches the light from the sides
of fish hardly bigger than a spark.

Paths
brambles, thistles
crack patterns of the skin
October paths
among the bruised gold of icons

and there was a sea of glass like unto crystal (4)

you see, how full everything is
and the brown of sandstone
liquid on the two-edged blade

and the third part of the sea became blood (4)
 
and your blood became sea -
October twilight
scraps of thyme and sage
from naked island to naked island.

Cyanose dark sky
in which a drop of oxygen conceives a dance -
these lines consume the music.
The wing
shines, plunges and shines again, darker,
a sunbeam dug into its back.
Transparency that explains nothing.