DON PATERSON

Sliding on Loch Ogil

Remember, brother soul, that day spent cleaving
nothing from nothing, like a thrown knife?
Then there was no arriving and no leaving,
just a dream of the disintricated life —
crucified and free, the still man moving,
the balancing his work, the wind his wife.

from Exeunt

I

Drop Serene

He poured the warm, clear guck into the mould
in which he'd already composed, with tweezers,
dead wasps on an everlasting flower
or ants filling over a leaf. When it was cold
he slaved at the surface, softening the camber
till it sat with the row of blebs on his mantelpiece,
each with its sequestered populace
like a hiccup in history, scooped out of amber.

As if it might stall the invisible cursor
drawing a blind down each page of his almanac
or the blank wall of water that always kept pace,
glittering half an inch, half an inch from his back.
He was out in the garden, digging the borders
when it caught him, in a naturalistic pose.

II

Curtains

You stop at the tourist office in Aubeterre,
a columbarium of files and dockets.
She explains, while you flip through the little leaflets
about the chapel and the puppet-theatre,
that everything is boarded up till spring,
including — before you can ask — the only hotel.
A moped purrs through the unbroken drizzle.
You catch yourself checking her hands for rings.

She prepares a light supper, you chat,
her fussy diction placing words in air
like ice in water. She leads you to her room
but gets the shivers while you strip her bare:
lifting her head, you watch her pupils bloom
into the whole blue iris, then the white.

'Sliding on Loch Ogil' taken from Landing Light (Faber, 2003)
'Exeunt' taken from Nil Nil (Faber, 1993)

Also available from Amazon.co.uk:

The Eyes (Faber, 1999)
God's Gift to Women (Faber, 1997)

Don Paterson's web site | faber.co.uk