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

        out of those wild, in-
              visible circuits, a
hawkmoth flew in.   was dawn (in
   deep vases, the      first
                           white lines of the  iris).

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     way that they ruffle   in
that rock   windcell (that their buds  un-
                          scroll and  open:  opened,

      asking myself only    for what I see . . .).

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     like birds trapped    in
          those tall,    still-
glistening frescoes: the errant    etruscan’s.

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earth it-
self held
in

that silent
ven-
triloquy.

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        muscled in
                washed golds or
waves    of pale naples, these deep
        androgynies: a

    joust of buds and   limp
                                         relenting petals.

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my lines, for an instant, become  theirs (but
            only
                     for the   extravagation).

_________________

     rise, loop-winged, in a   volley
of light yellows, stalks  caught
           in slender    rectangular jars . . .

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        being invisible, we
              sip at those open
emanations: tubers shot into    tall
             grottoes, emptied
                                            wind-  eaten tombs.

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        lovely, the irises in their deep
             oblivion, wounds   open on
what the poem would
       close: catch    in the purities of its fiction.

_________________

        a surf of
             frozen whites, for your eyelids; its
waves, that
                   pitched linen, for your sleep . . .

_________________

      (faience de moustiers)

      not the javelins stabbing
into their own    azurous mass, but the bowl, the
                          cold, sun-  broken round . . .

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       are corpses, too: the petals   streaming
             against the hard stalks, or
wizened, sack-
       like, in the tissued shadows   of their wings.

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               (Saint Vincent’s)

     those cold fires on
their piped    stems don’t flower, they
                    alight, perch there in   pale,
      insane violets . . .

(are prayers, are the smoke of prayers....).

_________________

are awe-

weights (for
weighing

a

grief
against....).

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      the dead    go on drinking, speckle
the white table   saffron
                  with their   transparent inks . . .

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      each iris: the      shell
                 of an     iris, the papery craters
of its spent
                 ebullience.

_________________

mass gutted for the sake of   an inference

_________________

     are the lines of     flight of
           these floral    chases (not the
blades, the buds, the skirts   blown, buff-
       white, over the draft of
                                            their thighs ),
 but the lines  driven, quilled,
       into the drawn lips  of the invisible.

_________________
_________________

                     (viaticum)

       the dried irises in the
            sleeves of the  oil lamps
are yours - for your journey - for dimming
                             those     gaudy winds . . .