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

Already at the brink he could have gone in storm, raging
under its electric dagger, naked, phosphorous, blue,
his body flickering into conflict, responding
to commands of Thunder, the God rising in his blood
streaming out beyond the known cone of himself.
In storm he would have descended violently,
bull-roaring at annihilation, bruising fists
hammering the green glass gates of Manannan’s palaces
until the locks of dulse and wrack broke open
and he jack-knifed through,
the undertow wound round his body like a guiding rope.

Or did he chose a day like this – a grace of light
silver on the tide? He could have walked into the river
at the estuary’s long loop
between tiers of blazing gorse where larks spiral out to heaven
and mossy boulders hold the empty cave of ram’s white ribs
as an archway for the bees.         Going out with the tide

he could have followed the wake of blue-legged swans
stately as burial barges, his hands grown frond-like
trailing nets through the river’s speed, spread toes
tender to the peaty ooze, his face
still within the realm of real time; one white feather
coming back to him, and passing.

Only water was open for him now he was deafened to earth,
to air. At the edge the waves’ cadenza
drowned the plover’s alarm, the shrilling of oyster catchers;
only the seagull’s screams reached him, and tore him.
Black-plumed cormorants flew a line of nine
and one stood as an angel pointing deep
as the Sea took him, hushing his cries, soothing
the salt from his skin        his eyes –

                                             Going Under
that glittery silver light became milky and he could sleep.
Gently then his memoried cells unfolded
like paper water-flowers finding their release.

Afterwards he would only shrug and say some luck of wind
had turned a sail towards him.
He was changed of course. I saw that his hands had opened out
and he held his palms wide as if both receiving and letting go,
whatever the weather. I would say he prospered, late in life
began to paint, loved again, grew tangerines.