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

A highstreet jeweller’s window
Pulsing with clocks,
Pendula rocking in see-saw;
The wave, a waterfall of jewels,
A jeweller’s window turned into a pendulum
Glittering as it comes,
As it recedes, full of topaz.

God everywhere,
The soul dressed in stiff leather and bone,
The slug in its woven watery silk,
The foundry ship setting out in its metal,
Fire in its heart.
Waves of disturbance, waves of peace,
One finger becomes god or master,
Clean and dirty at once.

The vulva a kitchen of spices,
One finger the cook,
A shaped word on the watery silk
Under the finger, the watered silk
She spins, as the spider does its governance,
The air-fisher among the fishing-craft,
The young spider spinning on gossamer
Across the waters oily with herring,
The feast-waters, even in the dark
Tall riggings of light, pinnacles of lamps
Repeating the stars, repeating
Dark nets that catch the bright fish;
With the furnace warming the dark hull
And the sea through which it passes,
Blackbody radiance, the sea-creatures
Bask in its presence; and in the daytime,
Such leaden horses!

The opening through which the sense of God comes,
The opening, both beautiful and terrible at once;
Or the leaden doors may close, the kitchen padlocked.
The maroon land-slugs,
Leaden creatures also,
But stoop a little and see their almost-transparency,
The alchemicking of mud into watery spyglasses of flesh.
The pony tosses
Its wet mane in the sunshine and merely creates a rainbow.