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

A wilderness is music on deaf ears.
That Persian city, Persepolis,
Where fire sang in Zoroaster's bones,
Has clogged the carburettor. Entropy.

Zend Avesta, if I've got it right,
Was like Sanskrit in some Aramaic script.
Zain was the letter zed, a word for weapon;
Then Marco Polo and three wise men,
Now Parsee in the Arabic alphabet. I can't keep up.

Shiraz! Where are those flasks of throaty wine
You used to do? The stuff we stained your rugs with?
And what has become of those subtle women
Who wouldn't take the veil? Omar Khayyam!
Such music in a wilful wilderness.

zet

Routine - a tree of lemons with no zest,
A boarding-house of widowers in cotton vest
And trousers missing buttons at the waist:
Peely-wally, slovenly, ascetic;

Otherwise real fruit made to look like wax,
Ascorbic sliver of silicone and dieldrin in your gin
Kennst du das Land, wo die Zitronen Blühn?
And people vote for Silvio Berlusconi.

debt

My debt is the life I have left, and I'm paying;
I've been dealt a fine hand I can barely hold to my chest.
Oh, if I could put a dent in this wall of law, now that would be something,
But duty and debt accrue. Forget forgiveness
Deft as the hands of a servant when she tucks in linen.
Dressed in ancient clothing, decked in pearls stronger than the law
She dreamt on sleeping waters and the dream
Forgave
Forgetfulness.

date

Device: it looked like Hans Holbein the Younger,
Stark as science; date - coming on 500 years ago.
The central shield was empty; angels' faces
Vied with hidden forces for control.

Emblems that draped the horrid vacuum
(Some cover-up on innocence made to pay)
Were probably not symbolic, but mnemonic:
Magic memory theatre; forgotten play.

deet

If you dreeped
You hud tae
Push oot fae the wall as you let go
Or you couldny bend your knees
When you hit the grun.

deid

He dreed his dreid
And deed.
He's deid.

side  Judo

'Whose side', she sighed, 'Would you be on?'
And smiled. 'The perpetrator
Never signed his snide remark
On the woman it was sired on. See?'
She showed her hand. 'Your name
Is not there.' - 'Who would put
His hand to an unsized canvas?
Slide-thrift. Your move.'

A man she should have taken in her stride,
A self-styled master, scythed her self-
Esteem in this po-faced
Pyjama tango.

sowd  La Kiuva

You'll have seen old faces scoured till they shone
As apple blossom soured into fruit, oh, every time
I scowled at the tree that stood
Like a pupil who would not get one verb wrong.

No friend of pain, I scowed the deep,
Deep Field that Hubble plummeted;
If every stound of neural lightning
Coined another bright day out of me,
What would the tannic darkness do?

Well, a self that gets too fearful can be sloughed;
I'm snake enough for that. Sound in the dark.
The message in the bottle is the wine.