Radka Toneff
Don Paterson


I'll let you go, if you'll let this come good.
I'm speaking it as quietly as I can
a mile or so into the Bygdøy wood
where you lost your voice. So much for the plan
to master the sounds closest to silence, sing
piano. Though I know now what you meant.
When the ear lights on the half-said thing
it leans into its distance, and is sent
out into those spectral fires that play
between the inner world and outer dark
as we are, to this zone of breath and blue
between the world and the dark. Radka, skylark,
you rose too far; though as it died away
I heard right through the song to what sung you.