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

1.  by loch fewin

     nothing to be heard, it's like listening for a note
     too low or high for the human ear
     but knowing it's there and the water is so
     still it looks solid and transparent

     nothing to be seen moving but for a cloud-
     shadow crossing the rock face of Suilven:
     it moves like pure spirit made visible and vanishes
     and once more the water is opaque and in motion

2.  coming south from loch lurgain

     morning: Stac Polly is a total wreck, more
     total than the puny wreck of a metropolis,
     near the rock a human voice breaks open
     like toy thunder, the silence snaps shut on it

     evening: from the right distance we can see
     the Summer Isles levitate above the water
     and Cul Beag bright and transparent as a lace
     curtain, if we were closer it would ripple in our breath

3.  the red pool, river kirkcaig

     nothing could be less coloured than this clear water,
     I stare through it, my mind clouded with images
     of clear water, boyhood is only six inches
     under, I can neither reach it nor see through it

     on the way home I look south to Ben Coigach  
     whose top is clear for once: the other side of it
     drops right down to a fifty fathom hole
     off Geodha Mor, scarcely a mile from the shore

4.  the names

     The hills wear their Gaelic names like old-fashioned hats.
         Is Meall Dubh no more than a Black Lump? What will happen
         to a language when it survives only in the names of hills, like
         the ancient pines in ones and twos, the remains of enveloping
         forests?

     A white boat slides between Isle Martin and Aird Point: the
         casual English voices echo across the water almost as loud
         as the calling of migrating geese. By the roadside a telephone-
         pole whitened by many winters has been singing all day.

     In an inlet on the north shore of Loch Assynt we saw a half-sunk
         rowing boat. Its lines were still visible and it looked as if it
         might be still good enough to retrieve - though perhaps it
         had already settled too far into the life of moss and reeds.