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

I sing for the born, for the not yet born,
For the never to be born, for the trying,
For the born who are dying, for the dying to be born,
For the dying and the dead and the driven.

‘Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me,
but weep for yourselves, and for your children.’

A nail bomb hammers through a Soho bar
And we don’t give a toss about the gays.
The gutter press clamours for a human interest story
For the White and the Straight and the British and the Tory.

Meeting for a drink for the first time since the wedding
Before going to a West End Show.
Husband and best-man catching up on all the gossip,
The wife showing pictures of the scan.

And the white papers show the white wedding snaps
Of the white-veil nightmare of the young white bride.
The blood and the hair and the glass and limbs flying
As the four-month-old foetus dies inside.

Crocodile tears for the Kosovo Albanians, the ones who look just
                                                                                            like us.
Media focus on the dead-eyed farmer on the track in his tractor
As he makes for the border with his wife and his kids
And the thin wailing baby in the truck.

‘Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore,
and the breasts that never gave suck.’

Mad March fever for the first Millennium baby
And we all know a baby’s just a fuck.
Anything for fame and to get on the telly,
The failures in the dark brown clots and the jelly
And the ones that miscarry, and the ones that aren’t proper, seen
                                                                                               off.

The ones that make it are in the dark.
The parents do the deals and pray that they’re the first.
The dads cross their fingers, the mothers cross their legs,
The cameras inside for the first shot of the head,
And will they show the footage if the baby’s born dead?

The Virgin cries, in the late December stable,
In the privacy of angels, of shepherds, of wise men,
The tears of the trying, and the desperate, and the barren,
The wombless, the childless, the dying for a baby
Which no amount of money can buy.

‘For if these things are done when the wood is green
what shall be done when it is dry?’

Mum doesn’t know where her dead baby is,
And all these years it’s eaten her away.
Unbaptised, unmarked, and she can’t say goodbye,
And it bothers her now like it never did before.

Paul was the one they had waited for,
A Victory celebration at the end of the War,
A present for Frank, his little baby brother.
He only lived an hour and Dad wasn’t bothered,

Thought it best to forget and try for another.
She was strong, she was healthy,
She shouldn’t have much bother,
If he saw to the arrangements, the sooner she’d recover.

The cemeteries are full of unknown limbo babies
In someone else’s grave, it was cheaper that way.
‘He was perfect’ said Granny, ‘He never should have died’.
Mum doesn’t know where her dead baby lies.

And I cry for the born, for the unknown born,
For the not yet born and the never to be born,
For the born who are dying, for the dying to be born,
For the living and the dying and the dead.