Robin Robertson Poems

It is always the same:
she is standing over me
...

Still sleepwalking through her life,
I wrap her up
and we go through the snow that fell all night
...

A figment, a thumbed
maquette of a cat, some
...

The slow-grained slide to embed the blade
of the key is a sheathing,
a gliding on graphite, pushing inside
to find the ribs of the lock.
...

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
...

Now the night has fallen, Edinburgh comes alight
as if each building's shell
has a fire inside that burned. The follies
- lit exhibits - stand here on the hill
...

Only a blue string tethers him to the present.
The small black goat; the stone enclosure;
the forked wooden altar washed in coconut
milk, hung with orange and yellow marigolds;
...