Poetry by Don Paterson

Thanks to all that posted and will post. I think this has been a successful project thus far. Poetry. Poems. Oh, how I fret. I have written quite a few, yet I do not feel like sharing. I am not quite that daring. I think there is a poet in all of us...somewhere.

This is a sonnet about poetry.


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 smolder, 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.



Copyright 1999 by Don Paterson. All rights reserved.