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

The child prepares herself to cross the bridge
gripping the handle of a basket full of very red cherries
Far back, at the base of the village
she took the fork in the main street
went over the hump in the road which bore
the house of the director of transportation --
a Lilliputian bus took the farmers
to the county seat on market day --
On the other side, she notices, down below,
a small white house, its terrace adjoining the washing pond
One day she’d fallen into that washing pond
sliding on the flagstones’ liquid shadows

The keyhole cuts out an alleyway
of flowering branches under which
garments swell indolently on a clothesline
and a naked child swings back and forth
rescued from time

*

The child prepares herself to cross the bridge
gripping the handle of a basket full of very red cherries
Bringing them to whom?
She’s forgotten, snatched up by the marvelous summer morning
the deluge of blue folds on her shoulders
the silver eddies of the river
around the captive rocks in its bed

The Ogre’s daughters, smiling, spit out foam-saliva
far from their father’s hunting-knife
The child throws a handful of cherries on the white water
If you swallow the pit, she’s been warned,
a tree will grow in your belly
Could an orchard spring up beneath the water?

*

The child prepares herself to cross the bridge
gripping the handle of a basket full of very red cherries
Farther on rise up the rumblings of the forge
sinister in this strange part of town
They say the blacksmith’s two daughters
have tuberculosis
Across from it rusts the never-opened gate of the château
hidden by fir trees and larch
a forbidden spot no one ever
enters, from which no one emerges
A damp path bitten by wheel-ruts runs alongside it
Its high boxwood walls
crackle with heat in summer
It’s a labyrinth from which, she knows, one could
never find the way out alone

*

The child will not cross the bridge
The world overflows with worlds round as her cherries
but she can’t take a step without
destroying the warp and woof
where her being is woven
Stopped short at the confluence of images
she is born to herself at that moment
having found her own shores