He who has neither the courage to die nor the heart to live, who will neither resist nor fly, what can we do with him?
Essays, Michel de Montaigne
No one is born because they want to, yet
the unlettered pen pals teach you to believe
that a second-hand appreciation leaves nothing
but a bad aftertaste—an old man’s grudge
like the scent of snow or the answer
to the question ‘What’s north
of the North Pole?’
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How do you feel when you see a gutter snipe
coming from Ms Woolf’s pen, and is that shiver
a sign of elevated social awareness or the fact
that we keep the sentiment while updating the vocabulary—
something with ‘challenged’ at the end, perhaps—
just as the stack of cups next to the sink
is no longer clutter but a measuring device
that marks the passage of time?
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No one writes anymore
to Poste Restante
that the billowing gloom
of fluff and puff
says more about longing
than the pristine sky—
unfortunately relaxing—
like when a handful of pages
proves more than a thousand,
whether one follows Norval
or his father on the Grampian Hills.
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With his ever-changing
insatiable curiosity for detail,
at one point Mr Honk wished
to explore clefs on the staff
and chord progressions,
but if he had learnt anything
from his last music teacher,
it’s that the most humble
might easily turn out to be
the malevolent one.
No wonder he played
Le Carnaval des animaux
as a ‘largo doloroso’
with a perfect smile.
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A dumbbell in my ribcage, like a dead weight
on a chopping board, pulverised—
a change of air might do it good—
and yet still carrying on
with its tedious staccato,
as if nothing ever happened.
Would it shock the ladies?
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When you find yourself vis-à-vis with the routine
horrors-turned-tattle, a walk down St Fittick’s might help,
even if the beheaded watcher’s house no longer guards
the graves from resurrectionists and unsolicited graffiti,
and you face either the leper squint or the rusting corpse
of a tanker abandoned in Nigg Bay. ‘But will it help?’
And how should I know? I’m only the poet.
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I would love
to write love poems
again.
There’s just no point in trying
when in the bittersweet
it’s only me
and aspartame.
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Romantic love is the desire for copulation,
embellished with the timid glances of a sonnet,
unless you are a eunuch who settles for lyricism
out of barren necessity.
Is that why I would rather have an empty bed
than empty shelves?
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I don’t like weddings;
I much prefer funerals, if anything.
But I guess that’s the result of being born—
everyone carries at least one curse
in the end. That’s mine.
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hidden pilcrow 