#brian patten

I’ve found a small dragon in the woodshed.

I think it must have come from deep inside a forest

because it’s damp and green and leaves

are still reflecting in its eyes.

~

I fed it on many things, tried grass,

the roots of stars, hazel-nuts and dandelion,

but it stared up at me as if to say, I need

foods you can’t provide.

~

It made a nest among the coal,

not unlike a bird’s but larger,

it is out of place here

and is quite silent.

~

If you believed in it I would come

hurrying to your house to let you share my wonder,

but I want instead to see

by Brian Patten

lying in that chapel in Verona,

miserable and spotty, at odds with everything,

what if he’d had a revelation from which

Juliet was absent?

What if, just before darkness settled

the arguments between most things,

through a gap in the walls he’d seen

a garden exploding,

and the pink shadow of blossom

shivering on stones?

What if,

unromantic as it seems,

her mouth, eyes, cheeks and breasts suddenly became

ornaments on a frame

common as any girl’s?

Could he still have drunk the potion had he known

without her the world still glowed

and love was not confined

in one shape alone?

From the prison the weary imagine

all living things inhabit

how could either

not have wished to escape?

Poor Romeo, poor Juliet, poor human race!”

Inessential Things - Brian Patten

What do cats remember of days?

Approach by David Talley

Excerpt from....

‘You come to me quiet as rain not yet fallen’

You come to me quiet as rain not yet fallen

Afraid of how you might fail yourself your

dress seven summers old is kept open

in memory of sex, smells warm, of boys,

and of the once long grass.

But we are colder now; we have not

Love’s first magic here. You come to me

Quiet as bulbs not yet broken

Out into sunlight.

Brian Patten, closing lines to Song for last year’s wife (from The Mersey Sound, Penguin 1967)

Reading list (from the Eyes of the Storm exhibition shop):

The Mersey Sound - Adrian Henri, Roger McGough, and Brian Patten

The Collector - John Fowles

The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold - John le Carré