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

You can remain silent even more, oh yes
even more than this.

With a fixed gaze, like that of the dead,
you can stare for long hours
at the smoke of a cigarette,
stare at the shape of a cup,
at a faded flower on the rug,
at an imaginary handwriting on the wall.

You can draw the curtain to one side
with wrinkled hands, and watch
rain pouring down the alley.
A child is standing under the arch with his colourful kites;
a dilapidated cart is leaving the empty square
in a noisy rush.

You can stay still
by the curtains, yet blind, yet deaf.
You can shout
with a voice quite false, quite strange:
‘I love.’
You can be a healthy and beautiful female
in a man’s overpowering arms.

With hard breasts,
with a body like a leather tablecloth,
you can stain the innocence of love
in bed with a drunk, a lunatic, a tramp.

You can cunningly belittle
every astounding riddle;
you can do a crossword puzzle;
and be content with discovering a futile answer,
a futile answer, yes, five or six letters.

You can kneel a lifetime
with a bent head, before a cold shrine;
you can see God in an anonymous grave;
you can find faith with a worthless coin;
you can rot away in the chambers of a mosque
like an old reciter of pilgrim’s prayers;
you can be neutral, like zero,
in subtraction, addition and multiplication;
you can imagine your eyes in their cocoon of anger
to be a colourless button in an old shoe;
you can dry up like a puddle of water.

Like a bad, funny snapshot,
you can, with shame, hide the beauty of a moment
at the bottom of a chest.

you can display the image of a convict, a defeated or a crucified person
in a day’s empty frame;
you can cover the holes in the wall with masks;
you can mingle with images more hollow than these.

You can be like a clockwork doll
and watch the world with glass eyes
and with a body stuffed with straw
lie for years amidst lace and tinsel
in a felt-lined box.
You can, for no good reason, shout
at every pressure of a lascivious hand, and say:
‘Ah! I am so happy.’