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The Blind Eye: A Book of Late Advice

Examine my thoughts

Don Paterson
Faber, pp, £12.99,

Wednesday, 3rd October 2007

Don Paterson

‘Now I’ll read a long poem.’ It was then I finally admitted to myself that the poetry reading was no night out.

Fate’s book, but my italics.

With friends and strangers I can be no one; more and more I confine myself to their company. Then one day I enter a room full of acquaintances, and fly into a blind panic: I cannot remember for the life of me who these people think I am . . .

I enjoyed L.’s creeping senility. I could have him repeat my favourite stories as often as I wanted, sometimes several times in the space of the same afternoon. X’s sudden lurch into his anecdotage, on the other hand, was a disaster: until then, his shyness had prevented our discovering what a bore he was.

It is possible for a woman to say, honestly, that she has thought of her lover all day long — but she will neglect to mention the 20 other things she has kept in her head at the same time. A man ignorant of this ability will be terrified by her declaration, since
were it to be his it would amount to a straightforward admission of his own derangement.
I would hate that my Christian friend lose his faith. The dreams of the eternal agonies of his close acquaintances were his one source of real pleasure.

I am sent a bundle of reviews and cuttings. I can now confirm that I have a small reputation as an intelligent and wise man; I also have another as an idiot and a fool. I have a small reputation as a man capable of courtesy and discretion; I have another as a graceless and loud-mouthed buffoon. I have a small reputation as a fine and original poet; I have another as an inept and derivative one. Accounting them all, they add up, precisely, to nothing.

One spare and brilliant book every 11 years; then they change his meds and he cannot stop writing. Worse, he thinks he has discovered a sense of humour. For a man in the last fifth of his span, about as likely as discovering he has been black all his life.

The memory of the symphony, painting, film or novel is no more than that — a memory. But to remember a poem is the poem; hence our making a fetish of its memorability.

Good workmen blame their tools too; there’s such a thing as bad tools. Really bad workmen utter no complaint, ask to be paid cash, and run.