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

1.   Far out down the pearl
      new moon behind the sky
      he is adrift
      calling out his names.

      It is not near.
      It is not far.
      It is War;
                      Huron, a place.

      She is called Grandmother
                  a lodger country,
                  he is cold         angry
                  beneath trees
                  leaving shadows on the stream
                  sucking smoke
      from his willow fire. Reflecting light from the clouds.

      Far out down the cascade
      Time dribbles in his visions,
      his cage not seen thru
      but scorched by the cones
      of pine acid and resin.

      Deep in
      the cool lung of forest
      his nature hung
      with the mad apple desire
      lost to his Eden.

      Abandoned in Huron
      only wet bundles of fir
              from silver fox
      to warm his escape;
      his traps rupturing the
                      mirrors of a thousand eyes
      from the city
      to the funnel of Niagra's Fall.

2.   Shielix told you and grappled
      your hunting slim fingers
      in her hot pursed mouth
      cursing for your mother
      when you were a child.

      Each night a blister came
      from the fear of being
      only one, against the jar
      of steel wheels burning fire;
      engines on the incline.

      Shielix and he snatching
      young summers from branches,
      pools where fish moved
      with them, fearing the banks
      of stronghold and rush.

      The legend swerving from
      the family to the World,
      catching so their young hearts
      in traps of sentiment
      pride and custom.

      Every chord a soldier
      from the veins of his hand.
      Sees one valley to cross
      the night. Shielix carrying
      him out of sight.

      Reindeer on the skyline
      set out in the dawn then
      to find the horizon
      to play with the hunter
      while the trapper was child.

      No one near him as he
      listened to the noise
      of the captured buck,
      no one searching his way
      just the carnage of clouds

      on this, his first free day.
      Just a child taking the
      musk from a tomb
      of warm hide,
      the light his anguish
      the Earth his guide.

3.   THE DIARY:

      To-day, escaping the hills 
                  Saginaw buried in me
                  a measure stitch of iron
      reflects the
                          G nought
      stinging the hills, thru dawn
      and the parabola of day.

      And I find listening
      for the Henchman
      to call the world goodbye,
      silent bathed in leaves
      from dying trees,

      the final gift
      is seeing the forest change
      to deep red bowl
      for the orange grain
      of Star harvest
      and the blinding of me
      on this first day.