the circle
My boy is painting outer space, and steadies his brush-tip to trace the comets, planets, moon and sun and all the circuitry they run
in one great heavenly design. But when he tries to close the line he draws around his upturned cup, his hand shakes, and he screws it up.
The shake’s as old as he is, all (thank god) his body can recall of that hour when, one inch from home, we couldn’t get the air to him;
and though today he’s all the earth and sky for breathing-space and breath the whole troposphere can’t cure the flutter in his signature.
But Jamie, nothing’s what we meant. The dream is taxed. We all resent the quarter bled off by the dark between the bowstring and the mark
and trust to Krishna or to fate to keep our arrows halfway straight. But the target also draws our aim – our will and nature’s are the same;
we are its living word, and not a book it wrote and then forgot, its fourteen-billion-year-old song inscribed in both our right and wrong –
so even when you rage and moan and bring your fist down like a stone on your spoiled work and useless kit, you just can’t help but broadcast it:
look at the little avatar of your muddy water-jar filling with the perfect ring singing under everything.
Don Paterson
