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

We have crossed many bridges
along the Herengracht, and now
happen upon this one,
a thin unusually blue line
of iron linking us
to our temporary existence in a state
under constant siege from rising water-levels.

I have always felt an inner sense of peace here.
Though you don’t care much for it,
prefer the architectural formality of Vienna
or Berlin, something about the non-confinement,
about the well-irrigated land nurturing its bulbs
into pale-pink, crescent-edged bloom
holds my fascination, especially the heart
of the Dam where all I see are means of escape,
places to hole myself up in and pretend to leave you
pondering the recent distance between us.

It was unplanned, of course,
but who was I fooling?
As darkness swooped, you landed,
cradled me in your arms and proposed
we rediscover the secret of nightlife,
the circular thread of floodgate and sluice.
We took our chances with the number three
not knowing where it might eventually lead us.

In the end, of course, it brought us to this,
where just as I am getting used to
your fledgling presence, to looking at life
in the ripples and marvelling again
at the ease with which the world
can be turned upside-down, I hold
the sleight existence of something else
in the shadows. Stuck firm to a mooring
pole, it watches me from inside
the thin red beak of its body,
the soft flap of its concealed wings.

Later, the sudden relief of heavy rain
will make me forget to tell you
about our intruder.
Tomorrow we’ll think of cycles,
play piggy-back around the Kring.

We’ll spend the afternoon in Small Talk
where I’ll indulge my short-lived passion
for pineapple and roast beef, and you
will watch the world drift by
as if suspended in a bubble.

We will hit a spot more turbulence
on our way home, arrive safely
but a month later lose whatever it was
we had. Call it a hunch, call it an act
of unspoken desire, but as we silently trace steps
back to our love nest, the shock of your arrival
stays with me, hides a darker truth.
Suddenly all hope of making things
better appears ill-conceived,
has been exacted painfully
and far, far too late.