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

James Harpur’s collection is weighted heavily by death. The opening poem, ‘The Flight of the Sparrow’, a translation from the original Latin of Bede’s ‘History of the English Church and People’, prepares us for what is to become a metaphysical dialogue:

Such is our journey through this life.
But as to what’s in store for us
Beyond the doors of birth and death
We are completely in the dark.

     It is this mystery which defines the work, whose mid-section is an elegiac sequence of sonnets concerned with the death of the poet’s father. There is an expiational quality to these poems and Harpur’s deference is tangible, but there is no attempt to deny the harsher reality, as the poem ‘Coma’ demonstrates:

Alarmed in the gangrenous demi-light
By his hobgoblin mask, his loosened mouth
Agape, disgorging darkness like a gargoyle;
And still his head rocks back and forth.

     Despite the subject matter, all is handled with a lightness of touch which balances the inevitable sadness. Ultimately, there is revelation and a certain peace of mind. From ‘The Road to Westport’, a poem reminiscent of a section of Wordsworth’s ‘The Prelude’, we are invited to share this experience:

Then without my willing it
Clouds drift apart like icebergs.
Beyond the snow-clumped fringes
As if looking through stained glass
I see a country beckon
Like a distant mottled Canaan

     Harpur is at his lyrical and poignant best here, and on firmer ground, I believe, than with the handful of poems which are either translations, or Classical in their allusions. In the final poem, ‘The Young Man of Galway’s Lament’, this poet demonstrates what he is capable of when allowed greater scope:

I will tell the sparrows to look for your blue dress
The winds will blow to me your spoor
The rivers will pass along your reflections
Churches will sound their bells if you should cross their thresholds;
At night the owls will spy the tracks and pathways
And the eyes of fish will break the surfaces of lakes.

     Here, almost as corollary to Harpur’s study of death, is a joyful reaffirmation of life. On the whole this work is sure-footed and accessible, with the occasional touch of that rarest of qualities, pure insight.