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

Silence, as if the blind were sinking down by an autumn wall,
Listening with wasted brows for the flight of ravens;
Golden stillness of autumn, Father’s countenance in flickering                                                                                            sunlight.
At evening the old village decays in the peace of brown oaks,
The red hammering of the forge, a beating heart.
Silence; in her slow hands the maid hides her hyacinth brow
Beneath fluttering sunflowers. Fear and silence
Of eyes breaking in death fills the twilit room, the wavering                                                                                           steps
Of the old women, the flight of the crimson mouth that slowly                                                                                            goes
     out in the gloom.

Muted evening in wine. From the low roof beams
Dropped a nocturnal moth, a nymph buried in bluish sleep.
In the yard the farmhand slaughters a lamb, the sweet smell of                                                                                    blood
Enclouds our brows, the dark coolness of the well.
The melancholy of dying asters lingers in sadness, golden                                                                                      voices
     in the wind.
When night comes you look upon me with mouldering eyes,
In blue stillness your cheeks turned to dust.

So silently a fire for weeds goes out, the black hamlet in the                                                                                               valley
     grows still
As if the Cross were to descend Mount Calvary,
The mute earth to cast out its dead.