The Wreck
even when it was all over—
towards each other rang and rang
We slung the drunk boat out of port
unmoor, a continent of grief;
like the tiny silent blazes
We blew them out and took the stairs
stripped off in the timbered dark,
like aqualungs, and thundered down
We surfaced later, breathless, back
up the mined beach of the dawn.
The
Thread
Jamie made his landing in the world
so hard he ploughed straight back into the earth.
They caught him by the head of his one breath
and pulled him up. They don’t know how it held.
And so today thank what higher will
brought us to here, to you and me and Russ,
the great twin-engined swaying wingspan of us
roaring down the back of Kirrie Hill
and your two-year-old lungs somehow out-revving
every engine in the universe.
All that trouble just to turn up the dead
was all I thought that long week. Now the thread
is holding all of us: look at our tiny house,
son, the white dot of your mother waving.
The Dead
though they speak with more than just the season's tongue—
the colours that they blaze from the dark loam
all have something of the jealous tang
in this, those secret brothers of the harrow,
invigorators of the soil—oiling the dirt
so liberally with their essence, their black marrow?
held out to us in love, or merely thrust
up at us, their masters, like a fist?
granting to us in their great largesse
this hybrid thing—part brute force, part mute kiss?
Stream
how ever often we tear it. We are all so
jagged, forever having to know;
but too great to show his favour or disfavour
with the same indifference and stony calm,
standing motionless to face the rift
our each inquiry opens in his realm
where the dead kneel down to drink
at his mute signal.
might beg the shepherd for its bell,
from its quietest instinct.
Rain
rain, braiding a windowpane
or darkening a hung-out dress
or streaming down her upturned face;
right through the empty script and score
before the act, before the blame,
before the lens pulls through the frame
beside a silent telephone
or the dress lies ruined on the grass
or the girl walks off the overpass,
along their fatal watercourse.
However bad or overlong
such a film can do no wrong,
or when the boom dips into view
or when her speech starts to betray
its adaptation from the play,
on a rain-dark gutter, running gold
with the neon of a drugstore sign,
and I’d read into its blazing line:
all was washed clean with the flood
we rose up from the falling waters
the fallen rain’s own sons and daughters
Being
Silent
comrade of the distances,
Know that space dilates with your own breath;
ring out, as a bell into the Earth
from the dark rafters of its own high place –
then
watch what feeds on you grow strong again.
Learn the transformations through and through:
what in your life has most tormented you?
If the water’s sour, turn it into wine.
Our
senses cannot fathom this night, so
be the meaning of their strange encounter;
at their crossing, be the radiant centre.
And
should the world itself forget your name
say this to the still earth: I flow.
Say this to the quick stream: I am.
After
Rilke
Know that space dilates with your own breath;
ring out, as a bell into the Earth
from the dark rafters of its own high place –
Learn the transformations through and through:
what in your life has most tormented you?
If the water’s sour, turn it into wine.
be the meaning of their strange encounter;
at their crossing, be the radiant centre.
say this to the still earth: I flow.
Say this to the quick stream: I am.
My Love
It’s not
the lover that we love, but love
itself, love as in nothing, as in O;
love is the lover’s coin, a coin of no country,
hence: the ring; hence: the moon—
no wonder that empty circle so often figures
in our intimate dark, our skin-trade,
that commerce so furious we often think
love’s something we share; but we’re always wrong.
When our
lover mercifully departs
and lets
us get back to the business of love again,
either we’ll slip it inside us like the host
or we’ll beat its gibbous drum that the whole world
might know who has it. Which was always more my style:
O the
moon’s a bodhran, a skin gong
torn from the hide of Capricorn,
and many’s the time I’d lift it from its high peg,
grip it to my side, tight as a gun,
and whip the life out of it, just for the joy
of that
huge heart under my ribs again.
A thousand blows I showered like meteors
down on that sweet-spot over Mare Imbrium
where I could make it sing its name, over and over.
While I have the moon, I cried, no ship will sink,
or woman bleed, or man lose his mind—
but truth told, I was terrible:
the idiot at the session spoiling it,
as they say, for everyone.
O kings petitioned me to pack it in.
The last time, I peeled off my shirt
and found a coffee bruise that ran from hip to wrist.
Two years passed before a soul could touch me.
Even in
its lowest coin, it kills us to keep love,
kills us to give it away. All of which
brings us to Camille Flammarion,
signing the flyleaf of his Terres du Ciel
for a girl down from the sanatorium,
and his remark—the one he couldn’t help but make—
on the gorgeous candid pallor of her shoulders;
then two years later, unwrapping the same book
reinscribed in her clear hand, with my love,
and bound in her own lunar vellum.
itself, love as in nothing, as in O;
love is the lover’s coin, a coin of no country,
hence: the ring; hence: the moon—
no wonder that empty circle so often figures
in our intimate dark, our skin-trade,
that commerce so furious we often think
love’s something we share; but we’re always wrong.
either we’ll slip it inside us like the host
or we’ll beat its gibbous drum that the whole world
might know who has it. Which was always more my style:
torn from the hide of Capricorn,
and many’s the time I’d lift it from its high peg,
grip it to my side, tight as a gun,
and whip the life out of it, just for the joy
A thousand blows I showered like meteors
down on that sweet-spot over Mare Imbrium
where I could make it sing its name, over and over.
While I have the moon, I cried, no ship will sink,
or woman bleed, or man lose his mind—
but truth told, I was terrible:
the idiot at the session spoiling it,
as they say, for everyone.
O kings petitioned me to pack it in.
The last time, I peeled off my shirt
and found a coffee bruise that ran from hip to wrist.
Two years passed before a soul could touch me.
kills us to give it away. All of which
brings us to Camille Flammarion,
signing the flyleaf of his Terres du Ciel
for a girl down from the sanatorium,
and his remark—the one he couldn’t help but make—
on the gorgeous candid pallor of her shoulders;
then two years later, unwrapping the same book
reinscribed in her clear hand, with my love,
and bound in her own lunar vellum.
The
Circle
For Jamie
My boy is painting outer space,
and steadies his brush-tip to trace
the comets, planets, moon and sun
and all the circuitry they run
in one great heavenly design.
But when he tries to close the line
he draws around his upturned cup,
his hand shakes, and he screws it up.
The shake’s as old as he is, all
(thank god) his body can recall
of that hour when, one inch from home,
we couldn’t get the air to him;
and though today he’s all the earth
and sky for breathing-space and breath
the whole troposphere can’t cure
the flutter in his signature.
But Jamie, nothing’s what we meant.
The dream is taxed. We all resent
the quarter bled off by the dark
between the bowstring and the mark
and trust to Krishna or to fate
to keep our arrows halfway straight.
But the target also draws our aim –
our will and nature’s are the same;
we are its living word, and not
a book it wrote and then forgot,
its fourteen-billion-year-old song
inscribed in both our right and wrong –
so even when you rage and moan
and bring your fist down like a stone
on your spoiled work and useless kit,
you just can’t help but broadcast it:
look at the little avatar
of your muddy water-jar
filling with the perfect ring
singing under everything.
For Jamie
My boy is painting outer space,
and steadies his brush-tip to trace
the comets, planets, moon and sun
and all the circuitry they run
in one great heavenly design.
But when he tries to close the line
he draws around his upturned cup,
his hand shakes, and he screws it up.
The shake’s as old as he is, all
(thank god) his body can recall
of that hour when, one inch from home,
we couldn’t get the air to him;
and though today he’s all the earth
and sky for breathing-space and breath
the whole troposphere can’t cure
the flutter in his signature.
But Jamie, nothing’s what we meant.
The dream is taxed. We all resent
the quarter bled off by the dark
between the bowstring and the mark
and trust to Krishna or to fate
to keep our arrows halfway straight.
But the target also draws our aim –
our will and nature’s are the same;
we are its living word, and not
a book it wrote and then forgot,
its fourteen-billion-year-old song
inscribed in both our right and wrong –
so even when you rage and moan
and bring your fist down like a stone
on your spoiled work and useless kit,
you just can’t help but broadcast it:
look at the little avatar
of your muddy water-jar
filling with the perfect ring
singing under everything.
Correctives
The shudder in my son’s left hand
he cures with one touch from his right,
two fingertips laid feather light
to still his pen. He understands
the whole man must be his own brother
for no man is himself alone;
though some of us have never known
the one hand’s kindness to another.
The shudder in my son’s left hand
he cures with one touch from his right,
two fingertips laid feather light
to still his pen. He understands
the whole man must be his own brother
for no man is himself alone;
though some of us have never known
the one hand’s kindness to another.
Why do
you stay up so late?
For Russ
I’ll tell you, if you really want to know:
remember that day you lost two years ago
at the rockpool where you sat and played the jeweler
with all those stones you’d stolen from the shore?
Most of them went dark and nothing more,
but sometimes one would blink the secret color
it had locked up somewhere in its stony sleep.
This is how you knew the ones to keep.
So I collect the dull things of the day
in which I see some possibility
but which are dead and which have the surprise
I don’t know, and I’ve no pool to help me tell—
so I look at them and look at them until
one thing makes a mirror in my eyes
then I paint it with the tear to make it bright.
This is why I sit up through the night.
For Russ
I’ll tell you, if you really want to know:
remember that day you lost two years ago
at the rockpool where you sat and played the jeweler
with all those stones you’d stolen from the shore?
Most of them went dark and nothing more,
but sometimes one would blink the secret color
it had locked up somewhere in its stony sleep.
This is how you knew the ones to keep.
So I collect the dull things of the day
in which I see some possibility
but which are dead and which have the surprise
I don’t know, and I’ve no pool to help me tell—
so I look at them and look at them until
one thing makes a mirror in my eyes
then I paint it with the tear to make it bright.
This is why I sit up through the night.
Two Trees
One morning, Don Miguel got out of bed
with one idea rooted in his head:
to graft his orange to his lemon tree.
It took him the whole day to work them free,
lay open their sides and lash them tight.
For twelve months, from the shame or from the fright
they put forth nothing; but one day there appeared
two lights in the dark leaves. Over the years
the limbs would get themselves so tangled up
each bough looked like it gave a double crop,
and not one kid in the village didn't know
the magic tree in Don Miguel's patio.
The man who bought the house had had no dream
so who can say what dark malicious whim
led him to take his axe and split the bole
along its fused seam, then dig two holes.
And no, they did not die from solitude;
nor did their branches bear a sterile fruit;
nor did their unhealed flanks weep every spring
for those four yards that lost them everything,
as each strained on its shackled root to face
the other's empty, intricate embrace.
They were trees, and trees don't weep or ache or shout.
And trees are all this poem is about.
with one idea rooted in his head:
to graft his orange to his lemon tree.
It took him the whole day to work them free,
lay open their sides and lash them tight.
For twelve months, from the shame or from the fright
they put forth nothing; but one day there appeared
two lights in the dark leaves. Over the years
the limbs would get themselves so tangled up
each bough looked like it gave a double crop,
and not one kid in the village didn't know
the magic tree in Don Miguel's patio.
The man who bought the house had had no dream
so who can say what dark malicious whim
led him to take his axe and split the bole
along its fused seam, then dig two holes.
And no, they did not die from solitude;
nor did their branches bear a sterile fruit;
nor did their unhealed flanks weep every spring
for those four yards that lost them everything,
as each strained on its shackled root to face
the other's empty, intricate embrace.
They were trees, and trees don't weep or ache or shout.
And trees are all this poem is about.
The Lie
As was
my custom, I'd risen a full hour
before the house had woken to make sure
that everything was in order with The Lie,
his drip changed and his shackles all secure.
I was by
then so practiced in this chore
I'd counted maybe thirteen years or more
since last I'd felt the urge to meet his eye.
Such, I liked to think, was our rapport.
I was at
full stretch to test some ligature
when I must have caught a ragged thread, and tore
his gag away; though as he made no cry,
I kept on with my checking as before.
Why do
you call me The Lie? he said. I swore:
it was a child's voice. I looked up from the floor.
The dark had turned his eyes to milk and sky
and his arms and legs were all one scarlet sore.
He was a
boy of maybe three or four.
His straps and chains were all the things he wore.
Knowing I could make him no reply
I took the gag before he could say more
and put
it back as tight as it would tie
and locked the door and locked the door and locked the door
before the house had woken to make sure
that everything was in order with The Lie,
his drip changed and his shackles all secure.
I'd counted maybe thirteen years or more
since last I'd felt the urge to meet his eye.
Such, I liked to think, was our rapport.
when I must have caught a ragged thread, and tore
his gag away; though as he made no cry,
I kept on with my checking as before.
it was a child's voice. I looked up from the floor.
The dark had turned his eyes to milk and sky
and his arms and legs were all one scarlet sore.
His straps and chains were all the things he wore.
Knowing I could make him no reply
I took the gag before he could say more
and locked the door and locked the door and locked the door
Wave
For months I’d moved across the open water
like a wheel under its skin, a frictionless
and by then almost wholly abstract matter
with nothing in my head beyond the bliss
of my own breaking, how the long foreshore
would hear my full confession, and I’d drain
into the shale till I was filtered pure.
There was no way to tell on that bare plain
but I felt my power run down with the miles
and by the time I saw the scattered sails,
the painted front and children on the pier
I was nothing but a fold in her blue gown
and knew I was already in the clear.
I hit the beach and swept away the town.
Souls
The body is at home in time and space
and loves things, how they come and go,
and such distances as it might cross or place
between the things it loves and its own touch.
But for you, soul, whom the body bred in error
like some weird pearl, everything is wrong.
Space is stone, and time a breakneck terror
where you hold to nothing but your own small song.
No wonder you would rather stay asleep
than wake again to your live burial.
But sometimes, shrinking in your tiny keep
you make out through the thousand-mile-thick wall
the faint tapped code of one as trapped as you:
saying: those high white mansions –I dream them too –
Mercies
She
might have had months left of her dog-years,
but to be who? She’d grown light as a nest
and spent the whole day under her long ears
listening to the bad radio in her breast.
On the steel bench, knowing what was taking shape
she tried and tried to stand, as if to sign
that she was still of use, and should escape
our selection. So I turned her face to mine,
and seeing only love there – which, for all
the wolf in her, she knew as well as we did –
she lay back down and let the needle enter.
And love was surely what her eyes conceded
as her stare grew hard, and one bright aerial
quit making its report back to the centre.
but to be who? She’d grown light as a nest
and spent the whole day under her long ears
listening to the bad radio in her breast.
On the steel bench, knowing what was taking shape
she tried and tried to stand, as if to sign
that she was still of use, and should escape
our selection. So I turned her face to mine,
and seeing only love there – which, for all
the wolf in her, she knew as well as we did –
she lay back down and let the needle enter.
And love was surely what her eyes conceded
as her stare grew hard, and one bright aerial
quit making its report back to the centre.
Sentinel
holding the plain truth in a bowl of fire,
I will think of you, aged six and running
from that two-room ark, your brother’s lonely rage
to where your father would not be again, brushing
the pot seeds from your coat, your moon-white hair,
figuring someone round here needs to pay some fucking attention
as you tack across a Broadway gridlock, in the dark and rain –
then the day I lost you in Kings Cross at rush hour
and saw I was the lost one, lost in the roiling,
polyhedral sea of their desire –
then found you on the edge, with all in view,
all in hand, tall as a mast of white pine
to which I had to lash myself or drown.
The Song
of the Human
There are days like this when I remember I am living in a glass box
marked Earth creature in his own habitat
except the visitors have long gotten bored at the sight of the bald ape
who sits all day
scratching at a piece of paper, eating sullenly from a cereal bowl, or
playing his funny little twang-box
and have wandered off in search of more interesting exhibits. Last
week I tried the door
and found it unlocked. I guess with everything falling apart, security is
their least concern
and I can now go out if I wish, explore the burning planet, try to
converse or breed with the weeping natives,
but to be honest I think I have become institutionalized and I am
disinclined to wander far.
There are days like this when I remember I am living in a glass box
marked Earth creature in his own habitat
except the visitors have long gotten bored at the sight of the bald ape
who sits all day
scratching at a piece of paper, eating sullenly from a cereal bowl, or
playing his funny little twang-box
and have wandered off in search of more interesting exhibits. Last
week I tried the door
and found it unlocked. I guess with everything falling apart, security is
their least concern
and I can now go out if I wish, explore the burning planet, try to
converse or breed with the weeping natives,
but to be honest I think I have become institutionalized and I am
disinclined to wander far.
The
Arrow and the Song
I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.
I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong,
That it can follow the flight of song?
Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the song there, still unbroke;
And the arrow, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend
About
the poet and his poetry :
Don Paterson.
Poetry Foundation
Don Paterson.
Scottish Poetry Library
Poetry
in the Age of Superior Television Drama: A Review of Don Paterson’s Zonal. By Brian
Brodeur. Literary Matters, Winter 2021.
On Poetry and Writing : an Interview with Don Paterson. By Stephen Carruthers. Dundee University Review of the Arts, February 3, 2017.
Face to
Face: Don Paterson - "Every compliment is like a stab to the chest" By
Phil Miller. The Glasgow Times, February 16, 2016.
40
Sonnets review – the perfect vehicle for Don Paterson’s craft and lyricism. By
Sarah Crown. The Guardian, September 26, 2015.
A Word
in your Ear : An Interview with Don Paterson. By Memphis Barker, Nanette O’Brien.
Isis Magazine, March 16, 2015.
An
Interview with Don Paterson. By J P O'Malley. The Bottle Imp, November 2012.
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