a teardrop squeezed from a curlew’s eye

Mentioned the other day that (to my shame!) I only actually owned one volume of Simon Armitage poetry ...

... well; I've duly rectified the deficiency and purchased a copy of the pictured, 2019 paperback edition of his 'Selected Poems 1989 - 2014' :-)

Here's a favourite from within:


Beck

It is all one chase.
Trace it back: the source
might be nothing more
than a teardrop
squeezed from a curlew’s eye,
then follow it down
to the full-throated roar
at its mouth:
a dipper strolls the river
dressed for dinner
in a white bib.

The unbroken thread
of the beck
with its nose for the sea,
all flux and flex,
soft-soaping a pebble
for thousands of years
or here
after hard rain
sawing the hillside in half
with its chain.
Or here,
where water unbinds
and hangs
at the waterfall’s face,
and just for that one
stretched white moment
becomes lace.

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Simon Armitage (1963 - )

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