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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

A poem with one line wrong is like a Rubik’s Cube with one square wrong: what it is precisely not is one move away from completion.

My school-friend was incredulous: I had bought my father’s old guitar with money from my Saturday job. Incom- prehensible to the middle classes, of course, but the poor buy and sell from their parents and children, to seal the money in.

Between the ages of seven and 12, I did nothing but study origami ... and for what? Four years ago, in a Belgian bar, I folded Adolfo Cerceda’s exquisite Peacock from a ten-dollar bill for a beautiful girl
from Kiev. I recall Roger Harbin’s marginal comment on this model in Secrets of Origami — ‘Now wait for the oohs and aahs’ — which, being all I have ever desired from an audience, made the palms of my hands ache when I first read it. Anyway, the girl reacted appropriately, I guess; she widened her eyes, she made a little O of surprise; then she flattened the note out and bought two beers. I still don’t get it. I can look forward to underwhelming my grandchildren on my deathbed.

The last thing I have written is always my favourite because I still host it; it is still me, is still in my body, in the wet red mill of my brain, and your insulting it can physically injure me. Say what you like about my first book, whose author is a complete stranger.