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

Proceeding still in the westward face, and like
a life underwater: that façade
                                               sheer and abrupt,
the face in all that shot towards venus, march
on the pentagon, all the prodigious cycle of ages.
Going on then any person still frequent, fixed by
the sun in that euclidean concept of "day", takes
a pause and at once is the face
                                              or some account
of it: mostly we are so rushed. Harassment is
not on the switch, playback of the perfect
                                                                darling
and late again — we can begin with the warmup
about the politics of melody/that one, and
please you say at once, not again.
                                                    By the face
we converse about stars, starlight & their twinkle,
since sweetly it subsides and by proceeding,
a long file above water, single
                laced after this
                jabber we keep it
                all going, at one time
                it is just that,
                                   gone: the
                                   refit is some
                                   pale & cheshire
                                   face. Conspicuous
                by its rays & terrible and grand this
                                    is not our feeling
                as blindly as I tread to find myself
                                    out of it, running
                on before them, accompanying them and
                          going with them,
                there, as I have not known for months,
                                         standing by a hedge : "I
love the shipwrecked man who was betrayed
by misfortune." As a cork rammed in the
century's neck, I see at once the faces who have
unsuccessfully dogged my path — the procession
headed by the old woman who walks & does other
things
                maybe she
                sings, this is
                her song :
                Blackie, she
                calls ( her cat free
                of sparks ), she
                treads with her
                face, the grave
                carried away
                                      she has stringy hair
                                      water flows at her feet
                                      it is often dark there
                                      nor quick nor neat nor
                any thing / along the path leading
                up to the Congregational Chapel at
                Linton the sepulchral urns mourn
                their loss of protein & like its
beautifully fishy stare the frontage
outfaces the morning, the star at evening, like
milk. Mostly this is the
end of it, through into some-
thing else, as, statement:
                                       the child is so quiet now
                                       he has stopped screaming
                                       the scarlet drains from
                                       his cheeks he is pale and
                                       beautiful he will soon be
                                       asleep I hope he will
                                       not thus too quickly die
in the sky the face Blackie she calls
him & he is there & without passion.