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

Because I've insisted on yellow you write saying
porsche yellow's your favourite, define it as the
                                                  buttercup
of Hohenzollern blended with Hapsburg's rich
egg yolk, want to know which shade I prefer.
Immediately I see
                               my child self plunging
hands into dandelion ranks bugling brightness
from a dirt pavement, see my paint brush laden
with nectar from a cowslip cube, filling outlines
of fairytale caskets
                         and the petals we sold as butter
on the paint-needy bench by the barbed
wire field opposite our house while far below
the great grey slugs of warships sat motionless
on the Clyde's highway.
                                       An echo of that colour
on my kitchen cupboards which like the past
are always clicking open. It's stronger
than the lemon
                          I've seen infiltrating hard
green fruits in Andalusian orchards, quieter
than the skin of the plump lemon that's sitting
in my larder. When I cut slices its zest
stings my nicked finger,
                                     resurrects the curtains
with uneven hems I made years ago
to keep the kitchen from heat's stare, from cold
feathered with frost. Winter pecking at flesh
summons up
                      that unyielding oilskin with a hood
my mother made me wear whenever it rained,
not knowing I was torn to ribbons on the school bus
by the hot pack chanting: yellow chicken.
The shameful label, still stitched to my body,
jumps me to a badge 
                                   I've only seen in black
and white photographs: the star Hitler forced
other Jews to wear...
                                   Yellow is the percussion
of light beneath clouds heavy as persecution,
the sweetness running from waxy cells, the body
soft as fur when pain's sharp gold embroidery
is unpicked. 
                       It sings from the bumblebee slash
on a motorway truck, wild flowers massed
on grass: celandine, lady's slipper, tormentil,
tiny warriors pitting themselves against
air fogged with chemicals...
                                        You see I can't extract
a single yellow. It's a bittersweet colour
which feeds emptiness in the middle of the night,
a state of mind that refuses fear. It's any place:
thistle field, ditch, shore with shifting sand
where hope survives.