Phantom 
Don Paterson

         i.m. M. D. 


IV

Zurbarán knew he could guarantee
at least one fainting fit at the unveiling
if he arranged the torch- or window-light
to echo what he'd painted in the frame.
This way, to those who first beheld the saint,
the light that fell on him seemed literal.
In the same way I might have you read these words 
on a black moon, in a forest after midnight,
a thousand miles from anywhere your plea
for hearth and water might be understood
and have you strike one match, and then another —
not to light these rooms, or to augment
what little light they shed upon themselves
but to see the kind of dark I laid between them.