The Wreck
Don Paterson


But what lovers we were, what lovers,
even when it was all over —

the deadweight, bull-black wines we swung
towards each other rang and rang

like bells of blood, our own great hearts.
We slung the drunk boat out of port

and watched our unreal sober life
unmoor, a continent of grief;

the candlelight strange on our faces
like the tiny silent blazes

and coruscations of its wars.
We blew them out and took the stairs

into the night for the night's work,
stripped off in the timbered dark,

gently hooked each other on
like aqualungs, and thundered down

to mine our lovely secret wreck.
We surfaced later, breathless, back

to back, then made our way alone
up the mined beach of the dawn.

Waking with Russell
Don Paterson


Whatever the difference is, it all began
the day we woke up face-to-face like lovers
and his four-day-old smile dawned on him again,
possessed him, till it would not fall or waver;
and I pitched back not my old hard-pressed grin
but his own smile, or one I'd rediscovered.
Dear son, I was mezzo del cammin
and the true path was as lost to me as ever
when you cut in front and lit it as you ran.
See how the true gift never leaves the giver:
returned and redelivered, it rolled on
until the smile poured through us like a river.
How fine, I thought, this waking amongst men!
I kissed your mouth and pledged myself forever.

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

A Fraud
Don Paterson


I was twenty, and crossing 
a field near Bridgefoot
when I saw something glossing
the toe of my boot

and bent down to spread
the bracken and dock
where a tiny wellhead
had broken the rock

It strained through the gap
as a little clear tongue
that replenished its shape
by the shape of its song

Then it spoke. It said Son
I've no business with you.
Whatever I own
is the next fellow's due.

But if I'm his doom
or Castalian spring —
your directive's the same:
keep walking.

But before it could soak
back into the stone
I dropped like a hawk
and I made it my own

and I bit its slim root
until it confessed
then swallowed its shout
in the cave of my breast

Now two strangers shiver
under one roof
the one who delivers
the promise and proof

and the one I deploy
for the poem or the kiss.
It gives me no joy
to tell you this.