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

A six-pane window in a yard-thick wall throws angled sunlight
first, upon the sill, on a mammoth geranium in a willow-pattern pot, then, on the scrubbed milk-wood of a long deal table,
where, stark and Biblical, large as a keystone, solid as coal,
yet crystalline as snow, flashing diamonds in the dairy,
squats a ten-pound pillar of salt.

In the sty the butcher grinds his knife; the pig squeals in terror.
Nain stokes the boiler’s fire, then heaves the back door off its  
                                                                                            hinges. They carry the body on this bier and lay it on trestles outdoors.
We douse it in steaming water, scouring the bristles with rough strokes,
and down the yard a crimson stream runs towards the gate.
Where it puddles the flies swarm
The butcher quarters the carcass, cleaves the rib-cage into chops, wraps a joint for his pains.

At the long table we hammer chips off the pillar
and rub salt into the still-warm pork flesh.
Each day lifts the muslin from the haunches on the slate slabs and we set to.
Our small hands work in more, melding it with the meat,
the cool muscle stiffened now, yet yielding to our embalming care. Beneath our red palms the granules scrape like grit,
but we know the seriousness of our task,
and hours pass in the absorption only children know.
Then, after twenty times, the block is gone, melted away,
the last crystals brushed from the milk wood.