Paterson, "Motive"

If we had never left this room
the wind would be a ghost to us.
We wouldn’t know to read the storm
into the havoc in the glass

but only see each bough and leaf
driven by its own blind will:
the tree, a woman mad with grief,
the bush, a panicked silver shoal.

Something hurries on its course
outside every human head
and no one knows its shape or force
but the unborn and the dead;

so for all that we are one machine
ploughing through the sea and gale
I know your impulse and design
no better than the keel the sail — 

when you lift your hand or tongue
what is it moves to make you move?
What hurricanes light you along,
O my fire-born, time-thrown love?



Don Paterson

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