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

I
Leaves birds berries flowers
sing in the window
bright as at the first
dawning; inspire the
voiced organ’s burst.

Sound bursts from the bud;
soars above bowed heads:
through our joined prayer can
share with us the fanned
chancel’s vaulted span.

The composer of
arched vaults of sound, cleft
light from roof and choir,
dazzles and conducts our
souls to divine favour.

II
Sherborne’s glass presents
embodied gospel:
choir and congregation,
organ and roof, respond
in absorbed elation.

As the festival
music fades and swells
the east window’s three
figures reach out in
bright dazzling plea,

white, shining appeal,
only to fade as
the light fails, and grow
frail, poorly, and pale;
to cry out and go –

quiet as the night that
has come on them. Sheep
fleeced on the hill, they,
flank-marked, prepare themselves
to be away

always; high up in
their glass are overtaken
by the night’s
shadows. Their’s, if worse,
is the common plight.

III
The sun of the Son’s
sacrifice burns off
layers of cloud, rough
clodded dung of soul,
branding us with love.

Sun is come down with
Tallis and Neale in
staved power; sings to fill
the doubting dark. Skies
move; the soul is still.

Stained yet unstained, the window
scatters its fire
through the naved shade. Its three
figures hang eclipsed,
crossed Christ and his thief-

friends, sticking it out
against the dark, to give
hope’s glint to those sitting
in glum pinch. To 1ive
is this, if knitting

our brows, beaten in
spirit by the now
total dark, we sing with
Christ and his angels
as they rise and burst

through the pane, caress
these bonding stones, this
mortal mortar, to
applause, to show the
colour of Lent anew;

spring the loving and
loveless in the light
pouring out of his side
and the woman or
man you are beside.

IV
Leaves birds berries flowers,
they are dark, too, but
sing the next morning, staves
missal-strewn, texts in
red-breasted octaves

illuminated in
love, won from the dark
by Sifrewas and Whas
for the rest of us,
booked to weather loss.