So too the self you slaughtered in the bliss
of her astonishing astonished kiss,
the loch in starlight or the late quartet
is what your dog knows as its waking state.

All I mean is soul just can’t allude
to that pretty trance you might know twice a year
when the ape is somehow home enough or mind
is lost enough for both to disappear,
but what is leaves unguarded and unblind.
Its holocaust. Its vast solicitude.

Don Paterson