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

1
Elle savait décrocher la lune

She knows how to unhook the moon

treading air we feast
on the fallout of stars
on the wingdust of moths

In another time
she unhooks the moon

Two bluebirds, or swallows
cracked from the world egg
between them spin a spring
and mercury rises

In a forgotten drawing room
in separate realities
Copernicus and Columbus circumnavigate
a globe grown small and silver
in pursuit of all our lost time

in an enduring lapis dusk
somewhere not too far, nor too near
spread jet wings brush a face.

Once she knew how to unhook the moon.
The poet sets sail
and a rainbow is born.

Somewhere else, over there,
here, where honeymooners
inflate clouds, slide
gently down Chopin’s glissandos

Galilee is glimpsed, and Babylon.
Through the eye of a needle
we count angels on the point of a pin.

In this room where
the hands of the clock
are missing, we conclude

that all time can only be
NOW and NOW and NOW,
and there is no anchor.

Near at hand, she lifts again
long fingers, once more remembers
how to unhook the moon.

2
La Lagune par temps blanc

Vespers, and a black moon.
But look - here’s a gentle piece -
for a friend in a faraway country

a rose lagoon, and from its centre
a soft mist rising, warm and teasing,
like a genie in a bottle

or the way lovers’ eyes
might meet and kiss
even across a crowded ocean

3
La Lumière du Soir

Everywhere swifts. In a mirror
a nightingale practises migration

and in the turquoise lagoon flamingos borrow
                                                                     pink
from a billion swallowed shrimps.

Day turns to night, and in the blink
of an eye we know that

the atoms that bind us together
also hold us apart.