Don Paterson

i

At the heart there is a hollow sun

by which we are constructed and undone

ii

Behind the mirror. Favourite place to hide.

I didn’t breathe. They looked so long I died.

iii

What’s shown when we unveil, disclose, undress,

is first the promise, then its emptiness

iv

Ghost-face. Not because I turned my head,

but because what looked at me was dead.

v

— We don’t exist — We only dream we’re here —

This means we never die — We disappear —

vi

We’d met ‘in previous lives’, he was convinced.

Yeah, I thought. And haven’t spoken since.

vii

All rooms will hide you, if you stand just so.

All ghosts know this. That’s really all they know.

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.

O tell us more about your dad,

or why your second wife went mad,

or how it was you had no choice

but to give those men a voice;

sing that Cornish lullaby

you hush your kids with when they cry,

produce a boiled egg from your pocket,

a flageolet from your jacket,

expand on your idea that rhyme

is dead, or tell us of the time

you dropped your cellphone in the toilet;

a joke, a bird-call – please don’t spoil it,

go on with your brilliant proem!

Anything but read your poem.

Once upon a time there was a book.

The book lay open to a page. The page

had a margin, and they shared a dirty look –

though the truth is they were practically engaged.

The page said roughly what it thought it should,

the margin said exactly what it wanted,

and all was grand. But one thing spoiled the mood

of the wee verge. ‘I’m so squished and tiny-fonted!

Why the hell should that guy hog the floor?

I’ll shove that silly bigmouth out the door!’

And soon the page was lying in the gutter.

Now it could weep and wail, and spit and splutter!

‘Time,’ the margin cried, ‘to make my mark!’

And suddenly it went completely dark.

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.