on the library
Poem
it shone at night it shone beautifully it shone like the eddystone it shone like the fire-cave it shone like the old torpedo works it shone like honeycomb spreadsheets it shone like alchemy alley it shone like aurora midnight mass it shone like a plainchant surge it shone like a troubadour fragment it shone like test-site instruments it shone like towerblock hypodermics it shone like a harvest moon supper it shone like famine eyes it shone like harmonica railtrack it shone like the tiger sonata it shone like chandelier futures it shone like the twilight home past it shone like news from another star it shone like the road to ruin it shone like iron in the soul it shone like an ampoule of angel dust it shone like a fistful of martyr clippings it shone like oranges in a net it shone like torches in a deep dark forest it shone like grandma's fireside it shone like the wicked queen's smile it shone like the necklace left in the laurel it shone like the ring spilled in the reeds it shone like a god's pursuit sandals it shone like an autumn arboretum it shone like the cherry pond spring it shone like a thief's deep pockets it shone like a jackdaw's escape velocity it shone like a pirate's night-sweats it shone like riot in lakeside towns it shone like an islay lock-in it shone like a boxful of butterflies it shone like a web at the wood's edge it shone like blazing hilltop victory it shone like the valley of last resort it shone like the story of you and me it shone all night
Poet
Having won an Eric Gregory Award for his poetry in 1975 and published collections in the mid-1980’s including The Floating World (Pig Press) and Brief Lives (Oasis Books), Alasdair Paterson only recently 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 Poets) and in arcadia (Oystercatcher Books). He is now retired after a career directing the work of academic libraries in Britain and Ireland and travelling extensively, particularly in Russia and other parts of the former Soviet Union. He lives in Exeter.
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About this poem
This poem was included in Best Scottish Poems 2010. Best Scottish Poems is an online publication, consisting of 20 poems chosen by a different editor each year, with comments by the editor and poets. It provides a personal overview of a year of Scottish poetry. The editor in 2010 was Jen Hadfield.
Editor's comment:
I fixated on a little clutch of Alasdair Paterson's poems: 'on taxonomy', 'on fruit', 'on stars', 'on civil war' and 'on empiricism'. 'On the library' is a slightly coy tribute to the SPL, of course, but I have a special weakness for a list poem (drab term though that is), which can teeter meaningfully on the threshold between communication and babble. Something in the list poem's repeated spur must impel the lines deeper into the brain; I suspect I process them differently to other poems. Certainly I judged this poem on different criteria: not on my reaction to this or that image, but whether it had something to say about the nature of everything. The poem had a further personal import. I have an uncomfortable relationship with books, sometimes, being both a nervous and an ecstatic reader, and Paterson's mythic library held an appropriate store of terrors and wonders.
Author's note:
It was in the McDonald Rd Library in Edinburgh that I first discovered the power of the written word, the joy of reading and the efficacy of an overdue fines system. Subsequently I spent my working years with keys in my pocket to a number of academic libraries, particularly delightful at night, when the lights seem to radiate outwards all the knowledge on the shelves, which tends towards all there is. It's this beam, slightly strobing, that I try to evoke, with each line a strong image in its own right but all moving in a kind of flashing progression that brings us back to where we started. It seems like a good time to assert again the unique power and allure of the library.