Little Aster
Don Paterson

after Gottfried Benn


We hauled the drayman onto the slab.
He'd drowned in the canal. Some wag
had set a small blue flower between his teeth.

When I went below his skin with my long knife
and reached up along through the chest
to cut out the tongue and the soft palate

I must have touched the stem and dislodged the thing;
it'd slipped from his mouth and into the brain
I'd set beside him in a steel bowl.

I packed the flower with the woodshavings
back into his empty chest
and stitched him up again.

Drink your fill of that great vase!
Sleep well, my little aster!