The Library of Congress

 
{ site_name: 'Poetry 180', subscribe_url:'/share/sites/Bapu4ruC/poetry.php' }

Poem Number 27

This is a sonnet about poetry.

Poetry

Don Paterson

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 smoulder, 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.

 

from The White Lie; New and Selected Poetry, 2001
Graywolf Press, St. Paul, Minn.

Copyright 1999 by Don Paterson.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced with permission (click for permissions information).