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

What passed across the poet’s face
Was the full force of estuarine mud
The total amnesia of a total disgrace 
A century of clerk-indentured script
The silences behind a baul’s eyelips
The crack of air in a jatra actor’s no
A wild smile on the doused ferryman
A year’s rain between Barisal & yes 
Colour’s intensity in an open mango
The flag of thirst on a hunger march
The river swaying between its zeros
All of these and never enough: life
Itself passed across the poet’s face.

What passed across the poet’s face
Was the full force of alluvial dusts
Absolute fiction in an absolute love
Turn of death that won’t forget life
The prayer-flag of a sufi’s ambition
A net-ful of boal stowed in the hold
A middleman cut in a bloated belly
A battleship of dalits sent out to die
A thorn-tree in the eyes of ten fish
A harvest of paddy lost to a torrent
The full ferocity of national debris
All of these – but far from enough:
Death itself stormed the poet’s eye

What passed across the poet’s face
Was enough to fracture all his life
What passed across the poet’s face
Was raw beauty in an insane mask
What passed across the poet’s face
Was love’s grace in all its disgrace
What passed across the poet’s face
Was too much for one man to bear
What passed across the poet’s face
Was just enough to stop his tongue
What passed across the poet’s face
Was life itself in a shattered house
All of this and more than enough:
Life itself stormed the poet’s face