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

Contemplating the cold and moist amongst these dull monsters,
Playground of imagination where stone and height are friend
Whilst beasts are none and fear is stealthy creeping weakness
Gaze to love, and such a stare defines the passion of the eye
As the face from sand to stair be weighed and held in hand
In terms of crease and fold; every hole and fine-etched cleft,
Where every breath of wind in summer gently stroked this brow;
Whilst winter’s demons howled and shrank the biting rock to
Jagged and rent where tempests raged against and ice infused;
This problem is so crafted by aeons of season, sun and moon
Then calibrated by innocent eyes which wish to know the lay,
The ballad which the face would tell of age without an age.
Of the first breath known so that angels nay once more ascend.

Prayer is uttered into the path of the changing face before
That this intruder of flesh and may of flesh decipher well
And cling in finger as in foot as closely as for life itself.
Now said the prayer, now breathing soft for wish fulfilment
Eyes still counting all the time; never trusting to perfection
Jesus-hands they love and touch as though the love is touch,
Then the one-way choice is made and contact is accepted,
The stone drains swift the pursed-up flesh of its warmth
Communicating to the creature that here is good ascent,
Through sinew tightenings flowing upwards as water down
Trespassing loudly the secret paths of wind and rain
Awakening the ascent with pressure here and caresses there
Forcing the creature into grace through aged pulse and reflex.

Pulling, pausing, breathing and above all learning the stone;
Travelling vertical and traversing wind-shrieked corridors
Carved in a one-way glass the stone, the silent watcher back,
Is speaking too and showing new cunning paths for feral reach,
Mere levering on ice-rent pits like shallow rain-spats:
No more than weatherings and all the time the fleshy plea
A prayer in every slow-quick movement that here, that there
Purchase can be struck and met with tensile body-weight
Coaxing, forcing seduction from such a giant silent tor
Winning as each golden prize the risk of nowhere losing all,
The tense rest is given over to the lithe creature heart,
An honest climb, never met with deception: cold task is all.
And even should the summit elude; that is the test you make.