The Hunt
Don Paterson


By the time he met his death
I'd counted off twelve years
and in the crossed and harrowed path
could read my whole career

the nights of circling alone 
in corridors of earth
the days like paler nights, my lodestone
dying to the north

while I lived by what uncertain meat
was left from his repast
and when rainwater and bitter light
could worm in through the crust

And in that time my axe had swung
no closer to his neck
than the echo of his sullen tongue
or the hot smell of his wake

Though now and then I'd find a scrap
of gold thread in the dirt
and once, a corner of the map
she'd sewn into my shirt

I had no use for either here
being so long deranged
by the tortuous familiar
as once I'd been the strange

Then one day near the heart, making 
a break in my patrol
I drained my flask and leant my aching
back against the wall

Across the way I saw a gap.
I conjured up a flame
and cupped it down twelve narrow steps
into an airless tomb

I gave the light from side to side.
The little vault unfurled
its mockery of the life I'd led
back in the upper world

The walls were lined with skinbound books
the floor with braided hair
in the corner, stuck with shite and wax
a bone table, a bone chair

On the table lay a dish of gall
and by it, for my lamp
a thighbone propping up a skull
inside, a tallow stump

I gently slid my spill into
one eye, then cut my breath
until a thin partitioned glow 
strained out between the teeth

It was then my misbegotten quarry
swam up from the gloom
loitering in the darker doorway
to a second room

We shuffled close, like two old fools
and stood there for an age
trying to recollect the rules
by which we were enraged

I read no terror in his frown
no threat and no intrigue
the massive head was canted down
in pity or fatigue

so I put my hand out, hoping this
might break our dead impasse
and he had made to tender his
when my hand hit the glass