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

A landscape infested with divinity. A small herb stares
at me with clear brown eyes. Mermaids tunnel in the river-
banks. I open the front door to a stranger and cannot take
my eyes from his. The skull is pure gold clear as glass.
I am happy to serve him my best dishes. The whore deliberates
over me, shall she wear her rubber stockings? Yes, she shall
wear her rubber stockings, and as the excitement rises I feel
my snout begin to twitch, my fingers fasten together, and I
leave hurriedly without finishing my drink. The earthworms in
the garden have white beards, and are portions on an oracle, written: white-/ leave (under mt trowel) your will (from the rosebush roots)
with your uncle (from the thrush carcass by the stone wall).
I have a dribble hole cut in all my wine-glasses so that no wine
shall touch my lips before the libation is poured. I have
omitted the libation only once, that was when I saw the ghost
of a plague of fleas whisk across the kitchen floor like a
frayed cloak. I made burnt offering of the meal all cooked,
waiting for me. There is a ghost becoming a god in the cellar,
which is full of golden smoke and a single unconverted underjaw
hanging in midair. Women go about muttering prayers and turn
suddenly into what they will, a stone or a fountain or a
pattern of rose-trees. When this first began, the archbishop
lost no time in retiring into civilian life, where he is
studying electrical engineering.
           I speak of that year as a jeweller:
           It was a year of brilliant water.
           A leaf falls, a thousand doors open.
           I see the adult hood of bonfires and rainclouds.
           The spider lowers itself on its thread
           Bright as a bead of mercury.
           Pierced with joy, my triangle broke
           And all the vultures' beaks began to foam,
           The moon filled up with black figures, clutching. 
           I put it into a book: I think of the printers 
           With their wings of hissing alloy;
           As I read it, the book grows too hot to hold.