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

You come out of hiding
from booths of caged birds,
drum at your side.
My fingers on its skin say, You, you.
And the topaz you give me
is cold and snatches old light
from Capao de Lana,
the dark place it comes from.
You give me a topaz
and it holds light and it sheds light
and to my ear it sounds
the old silence of the dark place
behind the cliff face in its nest of clay.
And the topaz you give me filters light
as if through silk dyed with onion skins,
or like a pan of milk
with a little butter melted
and an egg yolk,
or it is water steeped in sunlight
dripped from folds and crevices.
And a film of air creeps into this topaz
and a twist of colours follows here and there.

You ply the clayey mud
in cavities lined with crystals,
play streams over
fire-yellow, sherry-brown,
honey-wine-yellow, smooth-as-vanilla, crystals.

And you give it to me when the lamps are lit,
this stain on my palm,
this stain of light on the altar at vespers.
That it floats is a trick of the October air,
and here behind my eyes
there are corners not lit but for your topaz,
its yellow fire from the earth.
It holds the dim light of ochre and sand
when the tapers in the wayside shrine burn
and the wine in the chalice is the colour of topaz
and tastes of snow and of the slow juice of apples.
Its sound a bell caught in a drop after the first frost.
And the town shrinks to a stain on the path,
and you walk to the far shore
and I hear your drum boom faintly,
like wind lifting skin,
like your tongue on the ng of pingos d’agua,
like the wet silk of my dress when I fall.