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

Milky constellations. The colours of last night? Pale-green shadows, amber glasses, tawny-white stars and moon, drunken blackout. I gather snippets of history and gossip and conversation, am trying to explain borrowing and lend; how to survive in an atmosphere of rumour and intimation, how to live between the covers of a book. I gather snippets of history and gossip and conversation that have faded in the light. I am trying to explain memory and the lack of; how to survive without a desire to go on, what to make of social and technological change. Heat is transformed into cold, the past is hypothetical: what did we say or do? I gather snippets of history and gossip and conversation that have fallen into the sun, and burn out the optical nerve of history. In the library of the blind the familiar is kin. The more you write, the less in the will. Less will to write? The lesson ends.

Reconciliation. Substance, value and greatness; language is totally closed to me. Each item is a function of the last.

A chair is a good thing to be. We should all know that. Try a little subtlety in self-defence; it’ll help, you’ll find out.

Her flight was delayed for five hours. The village movie palaces were letting out. I betook myself to the tollbooth. A small cat rolled in the snow of the darkened gutter. Please return dishes to main room after using. She was carried to a fainting couch upholstered with brilliant poppies. It’s good to step off the steel carousel. I was on a shallow porch, looking about the walls of the familiar nest. Which direction did he say to take? Restlessness of fish in a deodorant ad. We’d all blow up if it didn’t. He had shaved his head some seven years ago. I’m confused now, a little. Abruptly the chords of a string quartet finished. I, too, need a poetry of meaning, of homage. In another life we were in a cabin made of small boards, above a thin lake. The pumpkin-yellow sun lit all this up, climbing slowly from ankles to handlebar. We all came to be here quite naturally.