Alasdair Paterson
MY LIFE AS A PICT
Pict is beyond you Pict is out of bounds Pict is back there in the fern-shadow daub in the blue-dapple pine waiting for a legion
School: schooling: schooled. The portico was Athens of the North but the shadows were Roman. With certain local features, e.g. a system of school houses soundly in the classical tradition but named for barbarous nations: Angles, Britons, Picts, Scots, King Kenneth MacAlpin’s fusion quartet. I was a Pict. I was there to be absorbed. I was there to be disappear. I was there to lose my language. Not Leith but Lethe.
Pict is the weave of absence the riddle guessed by ramparts the language of bitten tongue Pict is water on the carved rock when snakes ripple and boars rush and a few words flicker words or parts of words like sword sparks or plough spray or smuts from vanished hearths till the stone dries and calms
Not only/but also; either/or, unless/then. There was balance in the Latin dominie’s tough prescriptions, a blueprint for a world of certain consequences, of triumphal chariots you could ride on or trail behind in chains. Unless: in his hands he hefted more than a shape; there was Caesar’s skull, chalk dust made palpable. And from the depths of his robe, the leather, the sanction, the shining, forked, thunderous end-of-the-matter then.
but Pict is across the scentless river and far from the scratch snarl bite loosed from porticos from cloisters Pict is words snagged in the memory Pict is the secret paths the night walking Pict is inside Pict is inside Pict is inside
Pict is beyond you Pict is out of bounds Pict is back there in the fern-shadow daub in the blue-dapple pine waiting for a legion
School: schooling: schooled. The portico was Athens of the North but the shadows were Roman. With certain local features, e.g. a system of school houses soundly in the classical tradition but named for barbarous nations: Angles, Britons, Picts, Scots, King Kenneth MacAlpin’s fusion quartet. I was a Pict. I was there to be absorbed. I was there to be disappear. I was there to lose my language. Not Leith but Lethe.
Pict is the weave of absence the riddle guessed by ramparts the language of bitten tongue Pict is water on the carved rock when snakes ripple and boars rush and a few words flicker words or parts of words like sword sparks or plough spray or smuts from vanished hearths till the stone dries and calms
Not only/but also; either/or, unless/then. There was balance in the Latin dominie’s tough prescriptions, a blueprint for a world of certain consequences, of triumphal chariots you could ride on or trail behind in chains. Unless: in his hands he hefted more than a shape; there was Caesar’s skull, chalk dust made palpable. And from the depths of his robe, the leather, the sanction, the shining, forked, thunderous end-of-the-matter then.
but Pict is across the scentless river and far from the scratch snarl bite loosed from porticos from cloisters Pict is words snagged in the memory Pict is the secret paths the night walking Pict is inside Pict is inside Pict is inside
Copyright © Alasdair Paterson 2019
Alasdair Paterson’s most recent collections are Elsewhere Or Thereabouts (Shearsman Books 2014), My Life As A Mad King (Oystercatcher 2016) and Silent Years (Flarestack Poets 2017). He lives in Exeter, where he organises and presents the monthly Uncut Poets event. His work has appeared previously in Molly Bloom 2, 8 and 11.
