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  • To Andrew, Before One
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To Andrew, Before One

Alasdair Gray

He holds a spoon, certain of what he holds:
nothing more solid-certain than his spoon:
at clenching fist and hard thing clenched, the same:
no separation between noun and noun.

He waves the spoon, certain of what he waves:
lost in the rhythm of the waving weight
the small face is remote and yet intent:
to feel, think, dream and do are all the same:
no separation between verb and verb.

He drinks his mother: sweetness is a tree
whose branches swing and feed him:
mother, mouth, sweet and drinking are the same:
no separation between noun and verb.

“You shall not” makes him know he is not God,
dividing think from feel and dream from do,
creating adjectives like good and bad,
pronouns like you and me and mine and those,
till home is a place minced into tiny words,
the spoon a perilous thing no longer his
and food the bait of an enormous trap
he hardly will accept as universe.


Alasdair Gray

from Collected Verses (Two Ravens Press, 2010)

Reproduced by permission of the author and the publisher.

Tags:

babies existence language learning Poetry By Heart Scotland post-1914
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Alasdair Gray1934 - 2019

Alasdair Gray was a Glasgow writer and artist, most famous for his novel Lanark (1981): 'if a city hasn't been used by an artist, not even the inhabitants live there imaginatively' remarks one of the characters, but Gray imagined and...
More about Alasdair Gray

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