on the library
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
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.
