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

     A voice is singing . . . And in the same tree the same star is signalling to us. It is trembling like eyes tired from working at night. It always seems to be sewing, with a secretive air, in the dark fabric . . .

     Look. The poem of the ages laughs out loud and squeezes through all the hands of legends.. But the soul of those bygone evenings has preserved its intimate aspect as of a courtship . . . We can hear all the creatures of the night-time earth whispering in their different keys. A toad emits a dull, grave rattling sound under a large leaf. An insect files away at its bench. Everything is agonizing sweetness . . .

     O garden of bygone times, perfumed night-light . . .

     The evening fills to the brim the dahlias written in round-hand. The marvels of Peru have their spinsterish alarm-clocks. The glow-worms pout their distant little pout. The hawk-moths flutter from flower to flower, as messengers, or hover on the spot haloed by the whirring of their wings. The bats perform their card tricks on the moon. In the background, the roofs of the Bernadine smoke faintly against its heart.

     Very far away, the barking of dogs is no more now than a crumpling sound against the trap-door of the road, of that strange road which descends from fall to fall to the clearings of the moon where the old-gold brains of the morels dream.. The iron of a wheel rings out there upon a stone . . .

     When She came by the staircase of sonorous wood she brushed against the leaves of a low branch. The branch is still trembling. A ewer, which is no longer hers, is still gleaming at the far end of the shed, along with the tools, like a reminder of the pond . . .

     One night we were sitting there, outdoors on the little hillock. She against the tree, I on the ground. And I had let my head roll on her knees, in the panting silence of thoughts. And I was softly weeping. And at the edge of the plain, in a circle of moonlight, a charming animal, all straight and all white, had come out of the ground to look at us . . .