CloudCuckooLand

CloudCuckooLand

Author: Simon Armitage

Publisher: Faber and Faber Ltd
Published: 22 September 1997
ISBN: 0571192831
Cover: Paperback
Pages: 171pp.

CloudCuckooLand. A collection of poems which reflect the author's interest in astronomy and other celestial themes, including religion, but also concern themselves with moments in the life of his mind.
The book ends with a play based on events surrounding a total eclipse of the sun, Eclipse.

Contents

Thin Air
- A Glory
- The Tyre
- The Good Ship Melancholia
- The Winner
- Double Figures
- Self-Portrait with National Lottery Winnings after a Roll-Over Jackpot
- For the Record
- Stork
- A Gift Horse
- Lest We Forget
- Mojo
- The Ship
- Homecoming
- An Asterism

The Whole of the Sky
- The Mariner's Compass
- Hydra
- Virgo
- The Great Bear
- Cetus
- Hercules
- Eridanus
- Pegasus
- The Dragon
- The Centaur
- Aquarius
- The Serpent-Holder
- Leo
- Bootes
- Pisces
- Sagittarius
- The Swan
- Taurus
- The Giraffe
- Andromeda
- The Stern
- Auriga
- The Eagle
- The Serpent
- Perseus
- Cassiopeia
- Orion
- Cepheus
- The Lynx
- The Scales
- Gemini
- Cancer
- The Sails
- Scorpius
- The Keel
- The Unicorn
- The Sculptor
- The Phoenix
- Canes Venatici
- The Ram
- Capricornus
- The Furnace
- Berenice's Hair
- Canis Major
- The Peacock
- The Crane
- Lupus
- The Sextant
- The Toucan
- Indus
- The Octant
- Lepus
- Lyra
- The Cup
- Columba
- The Fox
- Ursa Minor
- Horologium
- Pictor
- The Southern Fish
- The Water Snake
- The Air-Pump
- Ara
- Leo Minor
- The Microscope
- Apus
- The Lizard
- The Dolphin
- Corvus
- Canis Minor
- The Swordfish
- The Northern Crown
- The Level
- The Table Mountain
- The Flying Fish
- The Fly
- The Triangle
- The Chameleon
- The Southern Crown
- The Chisel
- Reticulum
- The Southern Triangle
- The Shield
- Circinus
- Sagitta
- The Foal
- Crux
- The Telescope

Eclipse
- Eclipse

Self-Portrait with National Lottery Winnings after a Roll-Over Jackpot

Numbers, there on the screen, were the self-same:
the date of my birth expressed as a sum,
the rate of my heart while perfectly calm,
my height in feet, my weight to the nearest stone,
the teeth in my head, the women I've known.

Stark-bollock-naked except for a hat,
sunk to the waist in a slag-heap of cash,
I'm rolling a joint with a fifty-pound note
to blow nought after nought in rings of smoke.

The artists breaks off from his easel for a piss.
A mirror on the wall, face on, gives back
me in the pink, in paint, and me in flesh.

It's hard to tell the fraction from the whole,
I think: which makes up which, what gives, if that divides
by this, or this by that, or that by this.