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

Two seasons are visible from the high mountain
peaks. Up here, on the crystalline heights, snow
makes it winter all year round. Outlines of trees
stand in regiments of bare, white rib-cages
while down in the valley, the yolky sun
breaks out of its shell and illuminates the bell

that swings to and fro in the bright, stucco bell-
tower. Light ripples through orchards of fruit-trees
as the blossom opens, then falls like the snow
that falls each day upon the mountain.
Housewives bring out pet canaries in cages
and place them by the wall to catch the sun

on their feathers and make them sing. More sun
and more, reverberates around the sparkling mountain
slopes like the echoing of the joyful bell.
Though I prefer the silence of winter when snow
drifts against the windows and the branches of trees
hold the bald-headed moon in their sugared cages.

All night the lions would prowl round their cages
at the Dusseldorf zoo, roaring for the absent sun
of Africa. But these skies as blue as the harebell
or alpine gentian, still with a little melting snow
within each cup, distract me from the mountain
of my work. I study the structures of trees

and those of my hands (like miniature trees),
now weakened by the creeping disease that cages
me in iron bars. How fine to be like the sun!
Pure energy, that colours the planes of snow
without the need of brush or pen. Or like the bell
that waits to be tolled upon the mountain

by another's strength. Alone upon the mountain,
with my tired fingers twisted into cages,
I no longer hear the sound of the bell.
Shapes are muffled and amorphous, there's no sun
to create shadow and contour the rocks and trees.
With my stick I can make a few tracks in the snow.

Alone upon the mountain, making signs in the snow
that will melt in the sun or be hidden by trees,
waiting for the bell to release us from our cages.