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

1.       is the page I came across:

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2.       Like the paradox
          created by the person who says
          “My New Years resolution is not to make any
          New Year’s resolutions,
          because they always get broken,
          except for this one”.

Or like the Escher drawing
where the steps down
lead up. 

3.                                             

Maybe if you drench this page in lighter fuel
in the carpark of an all-night Tesco’s
wearing a signed photograph of a minor member of the
Kray gang
at midnight on New Years eve
(not forgetting to compensate for the over-accurate clock)

it will reveal to you
the time before you were born
how to keep the stockmarket rising for ever
where the rainbow ends
how to control the universe

or
the face of your true love.

4.

This page has been cleared
(at some effort and expense)
of all words, thoughts or information.
It is available on the Internet
in write-protected format
so as to preserve its emptiness from deletion.

Please feel free to plunge into the refreshing space
drench your over-heated brain in its snowy coolness
roll around it naked with a lover
or dive deep into its clear transparency.

Watch out for stray thoughts.

5.       There is one illustration:
          just a simple reproduction of a single white tile
          from one of the gardens of the Alhambra.

It’s part of an intricately pattern wall
over-looking a courtyard where peacocks walk,
their tails making a shushing sound on the floor
which is also tiled
in black and white
around a basin where a fountain sounds
like silver coins chinked in the pocket
of a man wishing on the new moon.

The moonlight is as cool
as lemon sherbet drunk beside the basin
while the man scrolls notes from his guitar
planning a serenade for his lover.
As he leaves he plucks a red rose
leaving no colour in the garden
except the blue of the peacocks
the green of the lemon tree
and the black of the cypress.

But you cannot see these
all you can see is the white tile
its white glaze etched
with a pattern revealing the baked clay below;
but that is also white
like the delicate design of white lace on the
                                                          white blouse
of the man’s beloved.
She leans out of her window
smells jasmine and rose
but does not see how red the rose is
because it’s night again.

Day or night, to you the scene is unseen
though if you touch the page
you may feel a faint coolness from the breeze
which blows down from the snowy Sierras
so that the peacocks shiver
and refuse to fan out their tails.

“Dale Limosna, Mujer,
Que no hay en la vida nada
Como la pena de set
Ciego en Granada.”

Give alms, lady, for there is nothing in life like the pain of being blind in Granada