Poetry

In the same way that the mindless diamond keeps
one spark of the planet's early fires
trapped forever in its net of ice,
it's not love's later heat that poetry holds,
but the atom of the love that drew it forth
from the silence: so if the bright coal of his love
begins to smoulder, the poet hears his voice
suddenly forced, like a bar-room singer's -- boastful
with his own huge feeling, or drowned by violins;
but if it yields a steadier light, he knows
the pure verse, when it finally comes, will sound
like a mountain spring, anonymous and serene.

Beneath the blue oblivious sky, the water
sings of nothing, not your name, not mine.

poem by Don Paterson
Added by Poetry Lover
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My Love

It’s not the lover that we love, but love
itself, love as in nothing, as in O;
love is the lover’s coin, a coin of no country,
hence: the ring; hence: the moon—
no wonder that empty circle so often figures
in our intimate dark, our skin-trade,
that commerce so furious we often think
love’s something we share; but we’re always wrong.

When our lover mercifully departs
and lets us get back to the business of love again,
either we’ll slip it inside us like the host
or we’ll beat its gibbous drum that the whole world
might know who has it. Which was always more my style:

O the moon’s a bodhran, a skin gong
torn from the hide of Capricorn,
and many’s the time I’d lift it from its high peg,
grip it to my side, tight as a gun,
and whip the life out of it, just for the joy

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poem by Don Paterson
Added by Poetry Lover
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