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

1.
Women flying this window - lustrous bodied insects,
joints of amber, lapis, chalcedony. Cerulean smears
peony flesh. Feldspar bleeds garnets, these last
Victorians aren’t carved jet.

Orpiment splashes stone, honeys shoulders, gilds
peach-blow breasts. No suet monuments, no commerce-
furrowed lips ... Giggles drown schoolmaster’s drone.
Elsewhere, drips rust tunnel walls.
Shady amaranth, dancing jade
jasper verdigris inlaid.

2.
First panel: glimpse glassmaker’s Albion. Woman
haunting privet-hedged paradise. Dark pupils
return my gaze.

Artisans once hammered chalices from her melted pendants.

Stained glass princess, rose-gold coronet, skin
like white sheets against cut grass,
tragedy’s expressed in glass.

Church bells toll when will I be? When will I be?

3.
Second panel: Saint Cecilia enthroned, lichen robes,
cold skin, straw hair, spun gold.
Lips drain air, hands hang like game.
Cecilia’s eyes are mourning houses. Black
bombazine, hair wreaths, ebony edged
calling-cards don’t disturb as noisy seraphs crowd.

Time pocked children mob the saint, sons
and daughters aged from two to twenty.
Some ragged, others a la mode, as if
a covetous piper stole a generation.
Wide mouths trill was I? Will I? Was I?

Guardian angels trill over empty cradles.

4.
Third panel: slight girl, iris robes.
Laughter shrills, skirts swish dusty pews.

Red mouth, a Christmas card’s robin.

Sunlight filters stone, I hear her whisper
was I more than this? Was I? Was I?