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

Ah, how I love that word “swooning” that lifts me
   out of myself like a delicious spring

wave that loops and dances as if taking my heart
   inside of it, replacing my silky sorrow

with such ecstasy I am the beautiful estuary itself,
   Pacific bioluminescence, sea anemone, moon

jellyfish, bubble and pickleweed; ah, delicate sea
   lettuce and sugar wrack, mew gull, tem, and plover.

I remember the one who accompanied me that shiny April
   afternoon north of Santa Cruz, he who became

part of the sea itself because of his hands opening
   the flowers outward: yellow primrose, beach

morning glory, sea fig and daisy; it were as if
   my heart were made visible again, little heart

that had slid back under its rib cage because once
   it was so afraid; he pulled the sadness out,

the sadness with its God-obsession, little organ pipe
   of mourning, I who had thought tenderness had been

exhausted, who thought of Jesus so much I became
   my own oboe mouth, bow, and string; oh, dull sorrow

of monasteries, rosaries, of Baudelaire’s soul
   like nausea welling up in the desert of spleen,

oh, self-loathing, acedia on a Sunday afternoon, and then
   this - ecstasy of wind and worm, discovery of flesh,

of the baby happiness hidden, the over and above and the
   no-way-out, such astonishment, consciousness

of the terribly erotic that wanted to devour me, such
   uncensored revelation, delirium, what longing -

away with El Greco and his burning dark colors, his divine
   pain, his structure and gravity, his shadow-wrestling,

something knocked me down on that beach, nearly
   converted me, and how awkward I felt

when the light hit, when the suddenness erupted,
   when the semi-darkness lifted a little, when I saw

the wave bend and beg, when the one who came with me
   took the unbearable and made it bearable again.