Robin Robertson Poems

He opens his eyes to a hard frost,
the morning's soft amnesia of snow.

The thorned stems of gorse
are starred crystal; each bud
...

for John Burnside

You'd know her house by the drawn blinds -
by the cormorants pitched on the boundary wall,
...

That moment, when the sun ignites the valley and picks out
every bud that's greened that afternoon; when birds
spill from the trees like shaken sheets; that sudden loosening
into beauty; the want in her eyes, her eyes' fleet blue;
...

after Fra Angelico


He has come from the garden, leaving
no shadow, no footprint in the dew.
...

after Chardin


These rooms of wood, of tongue-and-groove, open out
on a garden of white-washed walls and a maple tree,
...

for Catherine Lockerbie


Late January, and the oak still green, the year
already wrong. The season miscarried
...

after Baudelaire

The men would sometimes try to catch one,
throwing a looped wire at the great white cross
that tracked their every turn, gliding over their deep
...

Their long stares mark them apart; eyes gone
to sea-colors: gray, foam-flecked

and black in the undertow, blue
...

For Andrew O'Hagan
Three moons in the sky
the night they found him
drowned in Sawtan's Bog;
...

What am I to think now,
the white scut
of her bottom
disappearing
down the half-flight
...