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

a door is opened in the wall behind
I offer my sickness to the wind
and time
the conjure box

I

the luminous, their cubist faces
angles changing constantly
non angli sunt sed angeli

the bottle on the table
sings the old guitarist into structure
from the print of faded newspaper
an air of line a song of plane
there is no sky there is no eye
the worlds drawn near and draw apart again

II

life’s poetry
pall-bearer to the dying
silence drawn out into a cry

III

where living water
wears away the stone

where magic first vibrated dusk
and dawn climbed out

where what we say is proved
by voice alone:

the magic of the dance, the room
the plugpoints living each and singing

what is this they shout
and point at everything

and deafen me like children
till I answer - listen -

what is this
       a pen
what is a pen
       an object of our time
what is an object
       no
what is an object
       oh a kind of hole in space

       or no
       a kind of fold in space
       as we are folds in silence

better
says the standard lamp
but no cigar

IV

and the patterns in the sand have filled with sand

V

cross of doubt
the cruciform erection
fear we name
and which becomes a body
but is fear the same

magician
thru the light of books both read and unread
here between the leaves of memory and hope
the lines of Fludd and Paracelsus
flowing out and back

how everything is spiral out
recircling to the centre

VI

blessed art thou among women
o virgin fallen as the snow
thru autumns thru the winter
thru the spring’s profusion

ah but smoke is blowing from the windows
of the houses all on fire
a human figure
silhouetted in the upper window
framed in fire
one arm upraised thru flames

and all the forms predestined here to suffer
at the sounding of a city’s bell
and nothing known but names

VII

circle, permutation of itself

a funfair of colliding cars
a question asked and answered