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

A straw aloft in the heights of dawn,
this faint breath skimming the ground
what is it, then, that passes from body to body ?
A source escaped from the mountain flock,
an ember ?

There is no sound of birds among these stones,
only, in the far distance, hammers

*

Each flower is only of the night
that feigns to be neared

But I cannot hope to enter
the place where its fragrance blooms
that is why it troubles me so
and has made me wait so long
before this closed door

Each color, each life
is born where the eye has paused

This world is merely the crest
of an invisible fire

*

I walk
in a garden of cool embers
under the shelter of their Leaves

a burning coal against my mouth

*

What burns in tearing the pink
air by rough uprooting
or by constant moving afar

As it grows at night
the mountain on its two slopes
feeds two sources of tears

*

At the very end of night
when this breath is risen
a candle begins
to flicker out

Who can still keep watch
before the first birds ?
The wind knows, crossing rivers

This flame, or tear upside down:
an old coin for the ferryman

*

An egret pink on the horizon
a span of fire

and in the cluster of oaks
the hoopoe smothering its name

Avid fires, hidden voices
flights and sighs

*

The eye:
a source that overflows

But come from where ?
From farther than the most far
from lower than the most low

I feel I have drunk the other world

*

What is seeing ?

A dart more honed than the tongue
the way from one excess to another
from most deep to most far
from most dark to most pure

a bird of prey

*

Ah ! the idyll once again
climbing back up from the heart of the meadow
with its simple shepherds

for nothing but a clouded cup
the mouth cannot drink from
for nothing but ripened grapes
gleaming higher than Venus !

*

I no longer want to be in one place
to fly at the speed of time

so for a moment to believe
my motionless waiting