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

A room
            having more entrances than exits
(existence as the slim note of knowing)
                                                              takes back power
and every event is
                                      walls, ceilings, floors: the affects.

With knowledge
                          come the materials
              filling up air.

Let there, therefore, be few spaces:
we cannot endure emptiness
                                               too long:
              the vanquished dunes of crowded dreams.

My father’s house is duly filled
with happy ghosts. Two carpets creep on every floor. Pictures of
relatives:
                         his mother waiting to be presented to The Queen,
                         her mother, photographed previously, about to do
                                                                                                the same:
                         her husband, dressed as the Sherriff of Kent,
                                                                                            flashing an
                         official sunproof smile.

One hour in the life and breathing of flower gods
is supposed to show
                  how everything
                                  (and anything)
                                              burns and vanishes
                                                                       and then
                                                                                     jumps back:
and so we grow,
                            we also,
                                           into these spaces: we inherit the
shadows, the
                       places in gardens:
                                                     one hour asserting itself
as though it loved us:
                                one hour:
                                            the stones                                                                         breaking and uniting:
                                                                                              uniting.