A Poem, For No Particular Reason

This wasn't originally meant to be about what it ended up being about, and by the time I got round to trying to write something about what it was meant to be about, I couldn't really be bothered.

On The Memory of Don Paterson’s ‘Imperial’

So, it turns out there are acts
Consent cannot redeem:
La Poverella rages at DC.
This is not quite a joke. She
She goes beyond words,
Leaves the privacy of speech behind,
Turns herself inside out, like an animal in a trap,
Is a kind of rupture,
A tear rending itself wider and wider,
A sign bereft, an empty cry.
The world is cruel, she demonstrates.
What news.

The Paterson poem is in either Nil Nil or God's Gift to Women, both of which I liked rather more than his most recent collection, Landing Light, probably because they are significantly nastier.