Don Paterson

"The Alexandrian Library"

iv Small Hour

Your life has a smack of the prequel about it —
a bit underfunded, with you just a trifle
miscast in the role of the younger yourself.
Despite your impressive portfolio of shortcomings
you are not a bad lad, you have come to accept,
on balance, more blessing than blight; though if pressed
you could give the addresses of ten or twelve folk
inclined to feel otherwise, deeply.
Some call you an angel. Some call you a cunt.
They are both on the money: you model yourself
on those various itinerant Johnnies, proclaiming
the Matraiya, the Christ, in the meantime attaining
a kind of provisional, rough-hewn beatitude
before He shows up and comes down on your shagging
and drinking and lapses in personal hygiene.

from Landing Light (p.53)

"The Rat"

A young man wrote a poem about a rat.
It was the best poem ever written about a rat.
To read it was to ask the rat to perch
on the arm of your chair until you turned the page.
So we wrote to him, but heard nothing; we called,
and called again; then finally we sailed
to the island where he kept the only shop
and rapped his door until he opened up.

We took away his poems. Our hands shook
with excitement. We read them on lightboxes,
under great lamps. They were not much good.
So then we offered what advice we could
on his tropes and turns, his metrical comportment,
on the wedding of the word to the event,
and suggested that he might read this or that.
We said Now: write us more poems like The Rat.

All we got was cheek from him. Then silence.
We gave up on him. Him with his green arrogance
and ingratitude and his one lucky strike.
But today I read The Rat again. Its reek
announced it; then I saw its pisshole stare;
line by line it strained into the air.
Then it hissed. For all the craft and clever-clever
you did not write me, fool. Nor will you ever.

from Landing Light (p.34)

"The Light"

When I reached his bed he was already blind.
Thirteen years had gone, and yet my mind
was as dark as on my ordination day.
Now I was shameless. I begged him for the light.
'Is it not taught all is illusory?
And still you did not guess the truth of it?
There is no light, fool. Now have you awoken?'
And he laughed, and then he left us. I was broken.

I went back to my room to pack my things,
my begging-bowl, my robe and cup; the prayer-mat
I would leave. It lay there, frayed and framed
in a square of late sun. And out of pure habit —
no, less, out of nothing, for I was nothing —
I watched myself sit down for one last time.

from Landing Light (p.73)