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

I’m on a train ... into the dark. (once a year)
High air is warm, there is fire in this air, a thick, breathing oil.

It lights the fires ... keeps them wet.
Clicks ... sighs ... weird in the darkness ... a library of noises.

Thank God ... praise God ... I’ve seen it all.
I can curl up in a frost cave if I want to ... find ... restless death.
Seen ... enough to make me happy. Drawn here.

The singing, drawing of my mystery beacon, blue, crystal ... a blue lamp,
the lost ... village. Like they knew I’d come there. Like God knew.

Thank God ... praise God, holding my arms ... out against the great sky,
sharp sky ... against the mystery sky, moving
a little fast, isn’t it, too fast ... mystery.
The rest of the world moves around my precisely moving form.

Head ... with your little your little sparks of life ... God,
shimmering under my blood tracks ... and the train tracks ...
slowing through my brain tracks
shivering ... little me ... dying of hypothermia in a glitter berg.

(maybe one day, that’s me)
I’ll be that mystery skeleton, in the meteorite cavern.
I’ll be the first to survive these paths, look for another way to die.

The moving, shifting, running ... nature of my ... private ... life. My private
                                                                                                          life.
My mouth, comfortable ... its voice private, happy It can breathe, quietly, to
                                                                                                       itself.
Ruminations reach it. they are distant ... electronic.

(vividarium et interviglium et viator)

Happy I can mount the crest of the hill and run, desperate, over the night
                                                                                                      sky ...
and the Venice sky ... and the jungle sky. Through the clicking water,
falling into spinning fish ... (the ganges) eating me ... frothing me ...
wondrous ... clear and green ... the poison bubbles of my breath.
(it’s water, that’s all)

(two minutes)
Keep saying, to God ... with every step. (seen ... it all)
Every step a tread of heart ... if I die It doesn’t matter.
Then when ... wonders come ... I hold them, leaden. Nothing. Have I ...
                                                                                             ever cared?
(quod me nutrit me destruit) Once ... a year.

The ... last.