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

We set out along the beach. A horse thuds by at full gallop, rider plodding after. Caves and mine adits drip with water, walls streaked red ochre, turquoise with tin and copper ores, the deserted cliffs once busy with pumping engines, crushing machines, shafts, railways, furnaces. At the end of the cliffs we turn inland, struggle up the shifting dunes.
                                                       a saint’s buried chapel
                                                       over the fence soldiers
                                                       practice war

In the 6th century St Piran floated from Ireland on a millstone and here established a monastic settlement and college. The remains of a stone chapel lie beneath our feet. For centuries covered and revealed by shifting sand, it has now been buried beneath a granite block. We meet a woman with a blind dog.
    “I have seen the Oratory”, she tells us. “It’s a small one-roomed chapel. We entered through the roof and a service was held there on the Saint’s day. It was buried in 1980.”
    “Why was it buried?”
    “To protect it from vandals. There had been a lot of damage.”
The Saint’s pool has dried up since our last visit. Piezometers stick out of the sand measuring levels of the ground water. Red signs warn of military DANGER

We continue our way inland to an old granite cross beside the remains of a Norman Church. Only the tops of the walls are above the sand. Crouching in the ruins we eat the last mince pie. Wind blows through the three eyed cross, all traces of carving long worn away. We look back over the empty dunes to the chalets of a holiday camp. Back towards the coast. Golfers pause as we cross the course.

                                     wind-surfers skim
                                     the sea’s edge
                                     the taste of tea