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

1. Dara

How does the oak survive
where nothing grows?

"Cut it down, Paddy."

An encumbrance
in its own place.
We rip deep roots.

Here they will build
a temple to cotton,
obscure heaven.

Soon we become inured
to darkness, noise;
but now the wrench

of its letting go
has made air shrilló
A bittern cry

somewhere in memory,
dawn raking a valley,
raw and surprised;

the senses opening,
a blast of cold.
Half felt, half longed-for,

the half-memory we huddle
round timid with loss.
Nightly re-live departures,

watch again how a boat trailed
a slow finger, left the shore
desolate. We disembark at dawn,

but the journey's yet to make.
The dove we send out
comes back with ice in its beak.

2. Béarla

Words we are slow to learn
stammer like chains.

We stumble on this and that;
mean little shibboleths
hiss on our own lips.

This tongue's not to be trusted;
like charity it has strictures.
Accents put us in our place.

We perfect amiability,
the servile stoop. Keep alive
this small kernel,

the covenant we make
with our children
who will fluently sing
                                  in tongues.

3. Muirhéad

Mary they call me,
a meek name for a handmaiden;
rechristen me in mild water,
cleanse the seditious tongue.

When Dara calls I see them flinch,
as if a hand dipped in the holy font.
"Patience is the armour of the strong,"
Dara says. He keeps an acorn in a drawer,

whispers in the night, "Mo grá thú."
A breath, a mountain spring
finding me naked. I rise like a warrior
open to his thrust
                            dochloíte.

"O mo Mhuirhéad! Mo grá thú."
The forbidden tongue
licking my soul,
like flame, like balm.