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

Old Bones

They’re all there in Old Granary Churchyard,
Boston families buried in rows, some
distinguished with upstanding monuments -
John Hancock, Ben Franklin’s parents,
but most more modest, even famous sons
of revolution, Samuel Adams, Paul Revere.

Under Hancock’s column decked with flags
of the modern republic a small tablet -
for ‘Frank, a Servant’. No further name
or back-story, race unknown; the honour
of such personal remembrance forgotten.

Black or white, his bones now moulder
mingled with those of his master, equal -
all bones white, blackened with time.

Derelict Dock

Black rotting teeth, stumped pilings angle
out of water against a rusting quayside,
concrete shattered, weed sown sprouting pink
and yellow. Brickwork faded red, plaster
crumbled, faint lettering bears ghostly witness
to enterprises, lives long-gone. Windows stare
blindly out to sea. A small scene of desolation
and decay, but at sunset, struck by glowing red
and gold, a water-mirrored image exquisite
as any jewel or sacred reliquary.

Safe Passage

Our entry into port and leaving is marked
by bells: a doleful toll rings out its warning,
low insistent measured notes driven by wind
and wave and wake, mourning souls long lost
at sea, lying deep beneath the waters overlaid
with mist risen from hidden wreck-strewn
depths, where sailors past sound spectral
chimes announcing portals to their world,
invitations we renounce as passing through
the rocking beacons we gain safe passage,
and slow the sonorous ringing fades.