Alasdair Paterson
AGE OF GOLD
Burnish the armour.
Drench the altar.
Flourish the treasure.
Or walk out
into a flare of sunlight
that's all that matters
here, this moment.
Those gods you named
and brought to life
seem to like you.
Days like this, you might
expect to hear from one.
Pellucid, bright
as a rock-pool at sunrise
is how oracles speak
the day before
the age of second thoughts
AGE OF BRONZE
You gave the wounds.
You took the wounds.
Not all the wounds
were at the front.
Nevertheless.
You shared a sorceress' bed.
You wore out your welcome
with another sorceress.
The sorceresses were chalk and cheese.
Nevertheless.
You swore an oath.
You broke an oath.
Your words blew away
like spindrift.
Nevertheless.
Nevertheless
the wound you survive
is the scar you can live with;
sea-winds cancel spells,
salt spoils honeycomb;
and when it comes to
undertakings and offences
your memory is only
as short as anyone's.
Agreed.
Now and at last,
you're ready to go home.
AGE OF STONE
The night wood
of broken columns.
Heroes the colourway
Death-Mask Moon
gone astray and crumbling.
The air already filched
their bright colours and
rubbed away their eyes.
The weight of small birds
is too much for them.
Loser's arithmetic
they always struggled with
but still that applies:
subtraction tending to the point
beyond, the less than nothing,
footprints sunk in a plinth
like a myth of escape,
a myth of punishment.
How much they saw once.
How sad they are
now the stars have lost
their singing voices.
How they wish the gods
would get well again.
How little they seem
to have learned, after all.
CONTINUITY
1
Steel doors
make good stairwells
make good neighbours.
The archive of loose tongues
they threw open
downtown only yesterday
has a new lock.
Mother says:
all these years
whispering
and now
we're whispering again.
2
Yet it will be written.
It will, even like this.
The pencil stub.
The birchbark book.
This museum case says
done and dusted now,
our prison-camp years.
But maybe -
buy a pencil
on the way out?
3
The name of this building
was State Security.
Who's in there now?
We don't know.
It's a secret.
Footprints in the snow
go in and out
and you might have
the impression:
fewer coming out.
And you might count
just to be sure.
But better not.
Being a secret.
Copyright Alasdair Paterson 2013
Having won an Eric Gregory Award for his poetry in 1975 and published collections in the mid-1980s, including The Floating World (Pig Press) and Brief Lives (Oasis Books), Alasdair Paterson returned to writing after a 20-year gap with On the Governing of Empires (Shearsman 2010). In 2011 he published two pamphlets: Brumaire and Later (Flarestack) and In Arcadia (Oystercatcher). His work has also been anthologised, most recently in Best Scottish Poems 2010 and 2011 (Scottish Poetry Library), Best British Poetry 2012 (Salt) and Newspaper Taxis (Seren 2013). He is now retired after a career directing the work of academic libraries in Britain and Ireland; during those years he also travelled extensively, particularly in Russia and other parts of the former Soviet Union. He lives in Exeter. His next collection, Elsewhere or Thereabouts, will appear from Shearsman in 2014.