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

A bowl of eyes
I leave to autumn
Yes, a bowl full
of the unseen
For I have been granted
to see

The faces of the dead and the living
Human insufficiency
and the one thing needed
But of that
I am forbidden
to speak

I stand in Epicurus’ garden
There the laurel is in bloom
And the high gods
are endlessly remote

*

In the power of this vision I live:
Two towers
One pleasure-garden
Four roads
One entrance
Two springs to mirror myself
One spring to drink from
Two shells to listen in
and to whisper in
an answer to a question
which was an answer

As if we could ask
as if we could whisper an answer
as if some one of us asking answering
would have confirmation of something other
than the imperfection of the senses

Still your face is the garden of my blind hands
Your breasts are the towers on the feeling of the shape
that divides and unites
Your exit is my entrance
The four roads are our embracing
with arms and legs:
So we are eight
Still you are a goddess, not touched
and I not more than a prince!
What is a prince worth
among your mountains?
A place which the travellers avoid

*

(Philoctetes)

Hate has wounded me
Hate has made me a cripple
But that which hurts will also heal
says the oracle. So, let hate
destroy my hate! - O, gods who live
hidden in the stone, in the wooden slab
when I take my knife or chisel
and make visible your twisted
features - let hate
destroy my hate, and the stony
surface and the grainy wood
become smooth and even to the hand

*

The flight of the Prince of Emjan:
When the fifth year had come
the prince climbed a Kurdic mountain
Tired of the emperor’s blindness
satiated by his own inner sight
he threw himself with the help of a slave
out into space

No-one has found his bones
Only the vultures
for that’s why the place was chosen

*

You are the grain of sand
and on this unstable thing
I shall build my desert
You are the mother who is a virgin
and in the mirror hanging beneath your heart
I shall recognise myself

You are the lover
I have said to you: Let us change roles
You answered: No
but I awoke
with two jingling rings round my ankle

*