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

1
I write Mother
and an old woman rises in the uncertainty of evening
slips into a wedding dress
stands on tiptoe on her windowsill
calls out to the hostile city
addresses the haughty tribe of streetlights
bares her chest to the clocks
shows them the precise site of her sorrow
disrobes herself gently for fear of creasing her wrinkles
and unsettling the air

My mother had her own way of undressing
as one would strip the medals from a disgraced general

A cold odour was in my mother’s pockets
and three pebbles to break summer’s windows
my mother’s dress had drunk all November’s snow
dead birds’ cries had ripped holes in her hem

She chases them from her unconscious arms
insults them with the muteness of words
and the absence of echoes
within her walls knocked over
from within

It sometimes happens that despite the air’s vigilance my mother gets up
arms herself with a spade
turns over great shovelsful of earth which cover her
arousing the anger of taciturn neighbours who’ve turned their backs on the
                                                                                                       clocks
and broken off all correspondence with the grass
her chilled puffing and panting breaks through the soil down to that room
where, for lack of sun, she makes her knees shine and her tears sparkle

2
We had explained our despair to the thorn-bush and the juniper
our only cousins in that foreign language
we had cried on the shoulder of the pomegranate tree which bled on our
                                                                          doorstep every month

We had asked for an audience with the forest
and provided the testimony of two blackbirds who had seen us write the
                                                                 word ‘goat’ in both directions

we had vanquished the alphabet

Our shoemaker spoke Sanskrit
the priest and the stream spoke Latin

We were blamed for our ignorance of ornithology
although we knew every star’s name, and its precise punctuation on the
                                                                                          sky’s page

3
My mother would lose herself in the puffing movements of her broom
battling the sand which she called desert
the dampness she called crumbled water
swamp

remote from the world her sweeper’s hands
exhumed invisible corpses
pursued the least foundering of the wind
the slightest stain of darkness
she swept with such self-abnegation
and burst out laughing in the worst storm
for fear of appearing ill-tempered

Mother you were so modest
you took no credit for the wind which blew just for your arms as they
                                                                                                        swept

4
Tired of drying a dead man’s muddy tears under glass
she turned toward her garden
stanched the sweat of the pomegranate tree
cleaned up the lime-tree’s droppings

The evening which blued her doorway delivered her up to the wrath of
                                                                                                nettles
which reclaimed their share of her compassion and shade and the
protection of a wall monopolized by ivy which left on its plaster
the indelible mark of its pistil

In her dreams my mother made stacks
of houses without walls
of words without syllables
of dead stars which only shone for her sleep
keeping the gardens for insomniac nights
when it was imperative to convene the nightingales
to tell them her dream which they’d pass down from father to son

My mother opened her wardrobe to dead leaves which traveled far from
                                                                                     their branches
folding them into the weave of her sheets
hems and veins dressed in the same darknesses
The key made a weird sound when a ragged forest appeared at the door
to claim its share of the linens’ shade
leaving its soil-mark of shame on our doorstep

5
Give me a star to light my lamp
some salt to preserve the shutters’ tears
some oil to soothe the doors’ wounds
two arms to bury the fear-frozen bread

Your voice, mother addressing God through the skylight
made the soil bite the pomegranate tree

My mother wandered so far in her dreams
that we found her bed empty even of
sheets which she took with her to those lands tread by her sleeping feet
where she lost her bracelets and her soul
rediscovered beneath her pillow with the invisible guidebook of her sleep

My mother who would lose herself in the fire
gave our house over to the affliction of winter
and the shadow of the streetlight playing sextant

We had to look for her in the earth where she’d made her den
cry out her name along the stones
frighten our own voices and the echo which had seen my mother and the
                                                                                      fire... pass by