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

You can disappear in a house where
          you feel at home; the rooms are spaces
for day-dreams, maps of an interior
          turned inside out. See, you turn your face

from the light, and the white room crowds in,
          part beckoning to other places
through the odd angles of half-open

door and window, partly enfolding,
          with the radiator’s soft-pressed pleats
and chalky marble fireplace holding
          even the tablecloth poised in neat

suspension. You bend to the cat’s purr;
          become the pattern of light and heat
blown in with the garden-scented air.

At the table, you stir your coffee.
           The quiet of the house flows through you;
you dream its dream while the hanging tree,
           the yellow rose bush and the deep blue

of thunder-struck hills imprint themselves
           on chairback, cup, blouse. Across the room
a man looks at you and sees himself

framed on the opposite wall in gold,
            his mirror-image gathering the light
to a glowing backdrop. You still hold
            your spoon and the big coffee bowl, white

against the white cloth, watch the milky
            bubbles trail their slipstream spirals right
to the rim, collapsing with a sigh.

You know the blossom’s out when the light
             turns thick. It flows from the almond tree
into the room, faintest pink on white
             like sweet almond milk, an ivory

coolness that washes you of colour.
             You bathe in its scent, its January
facing-both-ways-ness, and remember

the soft green of the nutshell’s velvet.
             You’ve had too much yellow and crimson;
better to be bleached and faded. Let
              it all go; soon the door of your room

will be locked, leaving only a slight
              hint of you still, a ghostly perfume
lingering in threadbare curtains and sheets.